


The Mistake

by jalendavi_lady



Series: HP: Mistake 'Verse [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Forgiveness, Gen, Halloween, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-18
Updated: 2011-10-20
Packaged: 2017-10-14 21:17:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 31,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jalendavi_lady/pseuds/jalendavi_lady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One single mistake can change history forever. The change does not have to be for the worse, however...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. October 29, 1981 - 9 pm

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler Alert: This fic plays with the events revealed in the _Deathly Hallows_ chapter "The Prince's Tale". If you are a movies-only Harry Potter fan, this will spoil you for the second _Deathly Hallows_ movie.

It began with a mistake.

Actually, it began with several mistakes, and no one involved ever managed to declare himself responsible without someone else being able to point out an earlier mistake.

Chances were that it really began with one Merope Gaunt brewing a love potion. Except that even before that, her great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather had decided no one without a drop of Slytherin blood and with any Muggle blood whatsoever was to marry his descendants, and as such witches and wizards were rather rare to begin with, well...

But even that was based in the error of the sons of Slytherin, which had its foundation in...

As Lily Potter nee Evans once declared when the Blame Claim started up, "Just trace it back to Eve and the apple and be done with it before you wake Harry again."

* * *

The mistake in question, the one that _mattered_ , occurred on October 29, 1981 at 9 pm, at an Unplottable location not too far outside the wider London area.

It was the result of an earlier mistake involving a rather embarrassing confluence of events no one could have foreseen, leading to one paranoid Dark Lord's anger as well as a growing thought that he might have just located a potential traitor.

The end of a mistake and the beginning of another: one Death Eater named Severus Snape lying in lingering agony on a stone floor, absolutely certain that the Dark Lord formerly known as Tom Marvolo Riddle knew just what he'd been up to the past year and a half.

After all, why else would he have been called to said Dark Lord's side, questioned under the Cruciatus Curse repeatedly, and then left alone on a school night when he would be expected back at Hogwarts unless that Dark Lord believed him to be a double agent?

Particularly when his service to the Dark Lord - spying on the headmaster - specifically required him to get and _keep_ that job.

A chill settled on him. If the Dark Lord wanted proof he was a double agent, well, there was plenty of evidence to be found.

If he wanted to live, it was time to be a good little Slytherin and find a way the hell out _now_.

* * *

The wards on the door were easy enough to overcome even wandless - which should have been a sign - and Death Eaters were so used to both carrying their wands out of sight and having the living daylights cruciated out of them that Severus' departing in that condition didn't seem out of place.

The Dark Lord hadn't said he couldn't leave, and if he'd decided the young potion master _was_ a loyal spy after all, well, who was going to question it?

What Severus did not know was that evidence of his loyalty was even now being provided and that in a few moments his wand would have been returned with no apology given. He would be even more trusted than before, and in a few days the 'failure' for which he was tortured would have ceased to matter entirely in Wizarding history.

What he did know was that he overheard a whispered comment just as he raised his left arm to pass the wards on the front door, stating that wasn't it odd Snape was allowed to be there at the same time their lord was meeting with that dirty little rat?

He didn't miss a step, even as his mind remembered that some of the worst attacks of his NEWTs prep years had been prefaced by a castle rat nosing around and then disappearing around a corner... only to have James Potter's gang appear less than ten minutes later.

Often _much_ less.

It had been as reliable an indicator of their presence as Filch's cat was of future detentions.

It was no secret in the Order that there was a suspicion of a spy in their midst, and in fact Severus had been asked by Headmaster Dumbledore to keep his ears open about it.

He needed to get out _NOW_.

* * *

The Knight Bus, each and every bump, pothole, speed bump, and too-fast turn (with Ernie's driving, they were _all_ too fast) sending shocks through him.

Severus had lost count of the curses thrown at him, and now he was beginning to wonder if he'd set some record for quick mobility. The conductor had nearly insisted that he go to St. Mungo's instead of Hogsmeade, based on the look in his eyes alone.

But no, professors had privileges, one of which was no-questions-asked prepaid transport to and from the school area when needed, as well as access to Madame Poppy Pomfrey when injured. And the sooner Severus could get to Dumbledore's office...

No wand. A sickle and three knuts. Two linty lemon drops Headmaster Dumbledore had shoved on him a lifetime ago that morning. One rattled nervous system. No endurance left. Heart pounding. Mark burning, but not even the Dark Lord was strong enough to risk an attack on the Knight Bus.

Enough of his infamous sarcastic tongue left that there was no question at all about who he was.

He barely stumbled into Aberforth's bar and managed to fall through the fireplace when Aberforth finished setting up the temporary Floo connection to Albus' office.

The headmaster was already on his feet.

"Cover... blown..." he managed to gasp to the older wizard before he completely passed out.

It was 1 am, October 30, 1981.


	2. October 30, 1981 - 3 pm

October 30, 1981, at three in the afternoon according to the church bells in Godric's Hollow.

James was busy chasing Harry around the house - the birthday broom from Sirius still had the almost-toddler enthralled nearly three months later - and Lily was busy trying to ignore the noise.

Jennyanydots was curled up beside her on the chair arm, purring. Lily'd gotten the tabby cat as a tiny kitten when she passed her OWLs. Her parents had wanted to congratulate her.

(Her parents had known she didn't have a best friend anymore.)

She was trying to read an article in a potions journal about yet another potioneer claiming to have recreated the anti-transformational potion for werewolves that had been discovered and then completely lost to Wizarding science over a millennia ago.

She hoped for Remus' sake that they'd gotten the formula right this time.

Said werewolf picked exactly that moment to stick his head through the living room fireplace. "Lily, can Dumbledore borrow you for a couple of hours?"

James walked back into the room, Harry in his arms and finally off of the broom. "What is it, Moony?"

"I don't actually know, but something needs doing at Hogwarts, and from the way he was talking, it's Lily who can do it if anyone can. He wouldn't tell me any more."

She put the journal down on the table and stood up, despite a protest from Jenny. "Mind helping James with Harry while I'm gone?"

Remus brightened. "Sure I'll help."

He was always delighted whenever Lily reminded him that she, unlike most Wizarding mothers, did not consider him the slightest threat to her child outside the few days surrounding the full moon.

It was nearly the new moon. No risk from him unless he was the spy, and even if he were, James was still going to be here the entire time. Low risk, compared to some decisions they had made.

So why not help Dumbledore?

* * *

A short while later, she found herself stepping through a temporary Floo connection into Dumbledore's office.

It was a Friday, and so most of the students who weren't in a classroom were outside sprawled on the slope down to the Quidditch pitch. She could hear and see them through the office window.

"Welcome back to Hogwarts," Albus told her, eyes twinkling as he sat behind his desk.

They had not seen each other in weeks.

But then the twinkle faded. "I need your help, and I fear only your help will work."

She was a bit surprised. She had been near the top in all of her classes, of course, and received top marks on most of her NEWTs, but she had never been at _the_ top, except perhaps _maybe_ in Charms. Sirius was the Transfiguration master, James had been the best in Defense, Remus had a (relatively secret) flair for History - and all the bits of ancient magic and magical artifact knowledge that had come with being one of the few in their class to _listen_ to Professor Binns - and well, with so many years of experience before he'd gotten to Hogwarts how in the wide world was she supposed to have ever _caught up_ to Severus in Potions, even with he and his mother tutoring her for four whole summers and five winter holidays?

That had to be it. Potions. Dumbledore needed something examined or brewed that he couldn't risk Severus Snape knowing about.

(That he couldn't risk Voldemort knowing about.)

"That rumor I've never been able to squash, that the Order has a spy within Voldemort's ranks?"

She nodded. "I've heard it."

(Everyone had heard it.)

"It was true until last night."

She sat down as her legs gave out.

What that person had been risking... It was almost beyond imagination.

She chilled. What information had Dumbledore had to risk? What might be screamed out in the throes of a Cruciatus Curse even now as they talked?

"He made it back to Hogwarts. Alive."

She sagged with relief for whoever it was.

There were rumors, terrifying rumors, about what happened to those who tried to leave the Death Eaters.

(There was also the more-terrifying rumor that the first rumor was wrong, and the reports were of what happened to those who _stayed_.)

"He managed to tell me his cover was broken before he collapsed, nothing more."

"'Collapsed'?"

Dumbledore's eyes were sad. "I do not know precisely what happened to him last night. Likely the Cruciatus Curse, and certainly more than once. From what I can gather he traveled from London to Hogsmeade on the Knight Bus _after_ his escape. Wandless."

 _Wandless_.

Lily had spent enough time in Defense class - and enough time around James and Sirius - to know all that implied.

No Summoning anything that could be of aid. No counters to the lingering effects of that particular Unforgiveable - and those counters were only truly effective within an hour or two after being cruciated. No sending messages requesting aid.

Not even casting the basic anti-nausea and anti-bruising spells most wizards and witches relied on when using the Knight Bus.

Whoever it was, he'd been through hell last night.

"How can I help?"

"He hasn't woken up since he came through the Floo last night. Since we don't know what potions may have been forced on him as part of his ordeal..."

"... there's only so much you can do for him without risking an interaction. Especially since every single student sitting the Defense OWL knows the basic first-aid for the Cruciatus Curse, but not that counters for the first-aid exists. Given the right potion, even _chocolate_..."

Dumbledore nodded grimly. "Exactly, Lily."

"Why me?"

"Because you see people for who they really are and for who they have the potential for being. That is something most in the Order cannot begin to claim."

* * *

He put a Disillusionment Charm on her - she could have done it nearly as well, but when Albus Dumbledore offered to manage your personal security, you did not turn him down without very good reason - for the walk to the Hospital Wing, but it was unecessary.

The halls of Hogwarts were empty.

It was the day before Halloween and a Friday. None of the students were near the Hospital Wing, and the professors were no doubt keeping an eye on the students or preparing for the feast to come tomorrow.

Dumbledore dropped the charm as they entered the long wing. He led Lily past the two rows of very empty beds, into Madame Pomfrey's office - the witch nodded her grim greetings as they passed in front of her desk - and into a second room Lily had never known was there.

 _Of course. There would have to be a place they could put injured professors where they wouldn't be disturbed by students, wouldn't there? Or a student who had been attacked with apparent intent to kill, if there was no clue who the assailant was?_

It made sense this room was here, windowless and defensible.

It made sense they would bring an unconscious now-ex spy here after hours on the Knight Bus and who knew what before it.

(Students shouldn't know what someone looked like after multiple Cruciatus Curses and no first-aid or other treatment.)

There were fewer beds here, the light from floating globes - Lily thought they looked like the same sort St. Mungo's used for illumination - glinting off the frames, which seemed stronger than those outside. The mattresses seemed thicker too.

 _Long-term care then, as well,_ Lily figured.

Only one of the beds was currently occupied.

Pale skin showed above the white sheet, and the spy's black hair was tousled all over the place - obviously in the moments of making sure he was stable and then getting him settled in the bed, no one had thought to even finger-comb it down.

It wasn't until she caught herself thinking, _He's going to hate that,_ that she realized she knew him.

Albus put his hand on her shoulder as her eyes misted up.

Cruciated multiple times. Hours on the Knight Bus. No wand. No help.

 _Oh, Sev..._

The castle clock tolled the hour.

4 pm, October 30, 1981.


	3. October 30, 1981 - 11 pm

The church bells were ringing eleven o'clock, October 30, 1981 into the night air when Sirius came through the fireplace.

"Dumbledore says it looks like Lily is going to have to stay overnight at Hogwarts. He asked me to come tell you."

"What's he got her doing, anyway?" James asked. "He didn't tell Remus anything."

Sirius shrugged. "I don't know. He didn't tell me anything, either." And it was true. He hadn't even been allowed to go talk to her, even though he'd had to come through to Dumbledore's office in order to connect to the Godric's Hollow cottage hideaway. "Whatever it is, he's disturbed that it's taking this long."

"And if it takes until tomorrow?" Remus asked while trying to get Harry to sit down and be still.

Only walking for a few weeks, and already trying to get into everything.

The first son of a Marauder, and Harry seemed born to continue the tradition. It was enough to make Sirius misty-eyed.

"I don't know. It could just be she didn't want to be coming through the Floo at five in the morning."

Sirius saw James look at Harry. "It's the first Halloween that he might appreciate."

The unspoken completion of the thought: 'She should be here.'

The four Marauders had all been crestfallen when nothing they presented to Harry last Halloween had interested him at all. He had just wanted to sleep and then be carried around by each man in turn, before complaining loudly.

(They had handed him off to Lily, who had taken him into the next room while complaining loudly and at length about wizard hotshots who couldn't handle a simple diaper change once in a while.)

"I'll check again at lunch tomorrow if she hasn't come back. Maybe we could at least borrow her for an hour if Dumbledore still needs her then."

James nodded agreement, but if anything he was even more crestfallen.

Sirius threw an arm around his shoulders. "Think of it this way, mate: The more Lily can do to help, maybe the sooner the war can end. And the sooner the war ends, the sooner Harry can start having Halloweens with the rest of the Wizarding world."

"That's just it," James whispered. "She's helping. It's been months since Dumbledore had a single way I could even try to help the war effort, and I was still here while I worked on it." He clenched and unclenched both hands. "I want to do something more than just sit here and watch Harry grow up in hiding. He's never had open sky over his head!"

None of them had an answer to that. Not even Harry.

* * *

The clock had stopped tolling the hour a long time ago, at midnight.

Lily was glad she didn't have a watch with her. She almost did not want to know how long she'd been at this.

(How long he's been unconscious, when the chance there's been damage goes up the longer he won't wake.)

"C'mon, Severus. Whatever you know was important enough for you to not wait any longer than you had to at Aberforth's. You have to wake up if you want to tell us."

The tears were mostly out of her voice now. There was only so long a human body could keep them going, even when it felt like the world was breaking apart.

And her voice was _all_ she could use. She knew enough from Sirius and others who had been hit by Cruciatus Curses in battle with Death Eaters and been unable to get the counters in time that Severus did not need anyone touching him more than was absolutely necessary right now.

(Those reports had been for at most three curses each. This many? Who knew?)

"Severus, please. Please, just wake up."

* * *

The church clock was tolling eleven.

Remus was beginning to fix lunch and James was pacing the house.

Sure, he was carrying Harry around while he did it, and using that as an excuse, but Sirius hadn't shared a dorm room with him for seven years and a house for several more after his parents kicked him out of theirs without learning that James Potter was a pacer.

And for him to be getting this much mileage this early in the day, he either hadn't slept well or was worried desperately about Lily.

Given the current circumstances, Sirius was guessing today it was both.

"It's Halloween. What could be this important on _Halloween_?" James was muttering.

"The fate of the entire Wizarding world, maybe?" Sirius said sweetly. He stood up. "I might as well go through now and ask Dumbledore. Waiting another hour doesn't seem like it would change much."

James nodded his agreement.

* * *

Lily heard the single short toll of the castle bell that meant it was eleven-thirty.

Severus still hadn't woken up, but at least he wasn't acting comatose anymore.

Given what he'd been through night before last, moaning softly and clutching at the bedsheets were actually very good signs.

(Very good signs that he had enough mind left to be aware of the lingering _agony_ multiple Cruciatus Curses caused when left completely untreated.)

"Severus, you are going to completely _miss_ Halloween if you don't wake up. I thought you loved Halloween. You always did when we were kids. Remember when we were ten, and your mother gave me my first hat so I could go around telling people I was a witch properly for the first time ever, even if everyone just thought we were pretending? You laughed for an hour at the way I kept readjusting it in your living room mirror."

She'd had to stand on the sofa just to look.

"Uhn."

 _That_ had been different. Lily decided to press on to see if she could keep getting improvement.

(If intentionally making her childhood best friend wake up to a world of pain could be considered 'improvement'.)

"Your father didn't laugh then, but when we reminded him a few years later, after he got that promotion at the mill? Remember how he laughed until he was almost roaring?"

(He _died_ because of that promotion at the mill.)

The world needed more people with Tobias Snape's laugh.

(The world needed to have provided more chances for him to use it.)

"Lily?" he groaned.

Her heart soared. Very, very good sign. He was awake, he could recognize her by voice, and he was talking.

"It's me, Sev. You made it back to Hogwarts, and Albus pulled me out of hiding to try to get you awake," she explained quickly, hoping he could follow. "It's Halloween."

"What did you smell the first time Mum showed you _amortentia_?" he asked weakly.

For a moment she wondered if his mind was slightly scrambled, but then she realized. _He's making sure I'm not someone else under Polyjuice Potion._

"The first time, I smelled my grandmother's roses and musty old books. The roses changed to something else later."

(No - other - Death Eater would believe a Muggle-born could ever only smell two things in _amortentia_. Born potioneers had better pedigrees, of course. They'd have thought the two reports together made the complete three scent list.)

"Are any of your or Po... _James_ 's friends _animagi_?" he asked, more firmly. More awake.

"Yes." If she had to, she'd just say she was including Minerva in the list.

Severus was a Slytherin; he'd have likely pulled the same trick in her place. He would understand.

"When I was leaving... offhand comment I overheard... about a rat..."

She stood and had stepped backward before she consciously noticed she'd started moving at all.

Severus' eyes were open now, and she had no doubt the fear in his eyes was the mirror of that in her own.

(The pain was all his own, of course.)

"Poppy! Get Albus! _Now_!"

The Hogwarts' bell tolled noon, October 31, 1981.


	4. October 31, 1981 - Noon

The castle clock had just finished tolling noon, October 31, 1981.

Sirius was sitting in Dumbledore's office, trying for the hundredth time to explain that a child's one-year-old Halloween was no time for his mother to be absent, when Madame Pomfrey _charged_ into the room.

"Albus, you're needed in the Hospital Wing immediately. Something's wrong."

The headmaster stood immediately and charged towards the door in Madame Pomfrey's wake.

Sirius stood to follow, but Dumbledore turned around for three steps, pointed, and ordered, "Stay!"

He sat back down.

 _He's not supposed to know I'm an animagus,_ Sirius thought, trying to console himself against the thought that he'd just been ordered around like a 'bad dog'.

He'd mellowed since his student years, honestly. Especially after that one bad day he had accidentally pranked Mad Eye Moody... _successfully_ pranked Mad Eye Moody. _And it really_ would _have been better for me if I had failed completely._

Anyway, one way or another he would convince Albus that the Potter family needed to be together tonight.

He'd just have to wait and restate his case. Again.

Less than thirty minutes later, Dumbledore charged back in. "You switched with Peter?" he demanded.

"Yes. We thought..."

Dumbledore cut off the explanation. "Go back there and get everyone else _out_. Tell James to bring _anything_ he can't stand abandoning for good."

 _Wormtail sold out?_ He didn't have to ask the question - the answer was apparent enough in Dumbledore's own question and his intense reaction.

Sirius didn't even ask how he knew.

He just ran for the fireplace and the temporary Floo connection back to Godric's Hollow.

* * *

Sirius wasn't even out of the fireplace when he started yelling. "Get out! Get out!"

Remus was shocked. Wasn't Sirius the Secret Keeper? This building ought to be among the safest places in England right now.

Harry squirmed on his lap, beginning to complain at the noise.

James was on his feet in an instant, a horrible look on his face. "Peter...?" he asked.

Sirius nodded. "We switched," he explained sadly to Remus. "Albus says to take _everything_ you can't bear losing, Prongs."

James nodded. A moment later, Remus found himself being hauled to his feet, Harry still in his arms. "Moony, get Harry out. Padfoot and I will clear out the house."

Remus knew better than to argue with the pair. They worked well in tandem on projects like this, and both had always been better at Transfiguration than he - and it was going to take transfiguring to get all the Potters' essential belongings out of the house quickly.

"Already gone." He went through the Floo, Harry squalling because he had no idea what was happening to him.

He came out in Albus' office. The headmaster was the only one there.

"James and Sirius are clearing the house," Remus gasped out. "James told me to get Harry out. Where's Lily?"

"Hospital Wing." Albus led him out.

When they got to the Hospital Wing, Albus stopped in the outer room. Remus knew about the inner because that's where he usually ended up as a werewolf with a werewolf's medical complications. "You know the rumor we have a spy in Voldemort's followers?"

Remus nodded.

"It was true until two nights ago. Lily's been trying - successfully, I might add - to wake him up."

"He's why the Potters are being moved."

Albus nodded. "He overheard something on his way out after possibly having his cover destroyed - at least heavily suspected. He won't be going back. He was cruciated for so long he lost count of the curses, and followed that with a ride on the Knight Bus from London to Hogsmeade with no wand."

Remus cringed. He'd had to take care of Sirius after his misadventure with uncountered Cruciatus Curses, and that had only been three. Most wizards only actually lost count at five, and with a spy's likely trained resistance...

"Exactly. He's not going to feel like talking for a while unless he has to, so don't press."

Harry was still in Remus' arms, looking all around him with wide eyes.

Albus managed a slight twinkle in his eyes despite the circumstances as he leaned toward the child. "Welcome to Hogwarts, Harry James Potter."

Remus had to swallow back a lump in his throat.

This was Harry's first moment outside of Godric's Hollow in his life. His first experience of Hogwarts, too.

It belonged to his parents, not Remus, no matter how old their friendships.

The castle bell tolled once.

It was thirty minutes after noon, October 31, 1981.


	5. October 31, 1981 - 12:30pm

_The castle bell tolled once._

 _It was thirty minutes after noon, October 31, 1981._

Harry squirmed in Remus' arms, reaching with little fingers towards the glint of Dumbledore's glasses.

Remus smiled wanly. 'Stealing' James's glasses was a common pastime of the child, that and tugging on Lily's earrings. Albus' glasses had been the complete focus of Harry's attention every time he had ever been near the headmaster, and today was clearly no different.

Harry giggled as Albus leaned close enough for the attempt to almost be successful.

A few breaths later, Lily Potter came charging through Madame Pomfrey's office door. "Oh, Harry!"

Harry immediately looked her way and grabbed towards her. "Mumuh!"

She took him from Remus and spun in place as she held the little one close. "Mummy's right here, Harry."

It had very nearly been the longest the two had been separated since Harry had been born.

After a moment, she stared straight into Remus' face. "Where is James, Remus?"

"Clearing out the house with Sirius. He sent me through with Harry the moment Sirius gave us the warning."

She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, then kissed the top of Harry's head.

"He and Sirius both know what they are doing," Albus reassured her, then left.

"How much did he tell you?" Lily asked.

"That we had a spy, his cover was blown, he traveled here with uncountered Cruciatus Curses on him on the Knight Bus with no wand, and that _rat_ switched sides."

She nodded. "That's about it."

"He said you were helping wake our former spy up after his ordeal."

"I was." She swayed back and forth slightly, rocking Harry and making him smile. "Albus doesn't want too many details getting out yet. That's why he didn't tell Sirius anything, and that's why he isn't going to let either of us go back through to help James and Sirius."

"That and the fact they'd have to keep track of us as well as keep an eye out for an attack. Lily, the fewer people around them during a fight, _if_ there is a fight, the better, especially if the _goal_ is retreat. They make an excellent team."

She held Harry a little closer. "I just want him here, _safe_."

Remus couldn't add anything to that.

After a moment, he asked, "Does Albus have another plan now? I thought the Fidelius Charm..."

"Was the best chance we had, yes. And now... well, I doubt he'd let us repeat that trick, even if it had a chance of working. And James barely stood for it before." She sat at the foot of one of the beds, Harry beginning to play with her hair. "I... just don't know what happens to us next."

Remus thought he saw tears in her eyes, but said nothing. He sat down and put an arm around her shoulders. "Albus will do all he can, and so will we," he swore.

"I know. And so will the Longbottoms and the Weasleys, if it comes to that." She took a few deep breaths and seemed to calm down.

"So, who's the spy?"

She lifted her head up and gave one little beautiful laugh. "Oh, you'll never believe it."

He stared at her. "Surely Bellatrix would never..."

Lily giggled. "No. Besides, I doubt Albus would trust her _if_ she ever considered it. She's just the sort to be willing to risk faking for the sake of gathering information on us... and to get caught the first moment a Muggle-born _breathed_ near her."

Bellatrix Lestrange was infamous, and not all that much older than they were, not really. Not compared to Albus, or even to Minerva's generation.

 _Or to Voldemort's._

"Who?"

She stood. "Come on." She readjusted Harry in her arms. "Want to meet a new person?" she asked him, bringing their faces together.

He cooed.

"Lily, is that really wise?"

"Remus, I think it is _probably_ safe for Harry to be near someone who risked his neck to save his life. Possibly."

He could tell her emotions were all over the place and that she really was joking now.

Whoever it was, Lily explicitly and absolutely trusted him now, in her special way, and heaven and Merlin help anyone who tried to cross her.

"And besides, he's wandless and too hurt to do anything to anyone right now." That was Madame Pomfrey's addition from her office door. "I've done what I can, but I doubt counters after two _days_ can do much good."

Remus felt himself blanch. Sirius had been miserable, and he'd had access to chocolate four hours after he got hit. He'd just been fighting too heavily to take the time for the spellwork counters - and learned his lesson about what the results of not taking that time were.

That was the nice thing about Sirius since they left school - he'd started bothering to learn from experiences like that. When they were students, he'd have just shrugged it off and gone on like it hadn't happened at all. Granted, he often didn't bother applying the lesson...

"Two _days_?"

"Near enough," Lily whispered, clearly off of the emotional high again. "He wasn't conscious, so we couldn't tell what counters might be dangerous. Even Albus couldn't be certain enough to risk it."

And with that, they turned to walk through Madame Pomfrey's office, Lily bouncing Harry with every step.

Remus stopped in the doorway of the inner room. He knew the room far too well.

Then, he recognized the single occupant.

 _Well, that explains why Lily's emotions are volatile._

He and Snape looked at each other for a long moment.

"Lily?" Remus asked.

"Yes?"

"Do you have a camera?"

"I'm the mother of a one-year-old, _of course_ I've got a camera."

"Why?" Snape asked, eyes still on Remus instead of on his childhood friend and the child she apparently really did want him to meet - even with his past and all that had occurred between them.

"Because my sense of duty as an amateur historian demands I preserve for future Wizarding generations the looks on the faces of James Potter and Sirius Black when they come through this door later tonight."

Snape gave one, very weak and very pained, laugh before finally looking towards Lily. After a moment, he commented, "As my great-aunt's knitting circle would have said, 'There is no doubt about the paternity of that child'."

Remus felt scandalized. _How dare he insinuate..._

But Lily was laughing.

"Remus," she finally said, "that was the Muggle slang in our town for saying a boy looked _exactly_ like his father. Most towns have a version of it. 'Oh, I bet I can tell who his father is.' Things like that. It doesn't _mean_ anything else."

"Unless there's already a scandal brewing," Snape added.

"So how did you..."

Snape shook his head very slightly, and seemed to regret doing so immediately. "After they arrive, not before. I'd rather only tell the story once."

The bell tolled 1 pm, October 31, 1981.


	6. October 31, 1981 - 5 pm

The church bells tolled five times. The sun was getting low. Very low.

 _At least it's still Halloween,_ Sirius thought grumpily as he shrunk yet another trunk and levitated it into the duffel bag.

 _Scratch that. We're lucky it's still 1981!_ "Prongs, mate, I swear if you don't let us put quick-pack charms on your family's belongings once you get to whatever safe house is next..."

"I know!" James replied grumpily as he added another trunk to the bag himself. "There was a lot less of it when we moved in!"

Lily's cat sat on top of one of the three filled duffels, tail thrashing.

"What did you expect, that the nursery wouldn't have anything in it? Wouldn't take up any space? Sweet Merlin, we filled one of the duffels with nothing but birthday and shower gifts!"

"I noticed!"

"And he's only had the one birthday!"

"I know!"

At least it was almost through, and then they could go, two bags per wizard - go and be safe.

Sirius on one level detested the thought of simply fleeing. If it had been his choice, he'd have had a band of older Aurors there - Mad Eye at least - waiting here when whatever Death Eaters might be coming showed up. James was known for his fighting skill, and surely the assault on the home would be left to the powerful.

It would have been a grand chance to capture or kill some of the strong Death Eaters who kept eluding them.

 _Oh, for a chance at crazy cousin Bella,_ he thought. _To stop her 'fun'._ The list of dead, Muggle and otherwise, she left in her wake had been getting longer for years now.

But no. They had to clear out the house, and with no packing charms placed ahead of time, there was no time for anything else.

Dumbledore - either of them, truthfully - probably could have done it all with a single wand-stroke per room. Sirius had watched Aberforth clean the Hog's Head at closing time before, and even the younger Dumbledore brother held power and skill Sirius could only dream to one day possess.

Or, rather, dream to live long enough to possess, given his chosen line of work and his Sorting.

They had to bring the family's belongings to Lily and little Harry and make sure that James was there for them - hopefully until the child was grown or at the very least Sorted - and that meant not taking such risks.

These were times for even Gryffindors to run and hide, and Sirius detested it.

* * *

"I'm so glad you could come." Alice Longbottom smiled as Arthur and Molly Weasley stood on her front step. "Well, what are you waiting for? Come in, come in! And happy Halloween!"

"Happy Halloween," they both told her in return.

"So nice of Muriel to watch the children for us," Molly said. "Although I don't think she could manage if she wasn't so good at Calming Charms!"

The two women laughed.

"Neville's enough of a challenge on his own; I can't imagine what it's like with the twins and Ron so young."

"At least Ginny isn't crawling after them yet," Arthur commented drily.

"Frank's mother manged to come, and she said she'll keep an eye on Neville, so it's just us adults downstairs tonight."

"Sweeter words were never spoken," Molly told her. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had dinner on Halloween without the children...

Yes, she could. She'd been 8 months pregnant with William at the time.

 _And he'll be Sorted, come next September. Feels like it can't have been so long..._

Frank took their coats when they came into the sitting room. "Lovely weather for a Halloween, isn't it? If it weren't for the Death Eaters, I think I'd fancy a good after-dinner fly."

They all laughed. Halloween was a time for putting your hair down and hat on... and for many witches and wizards, it was a day when one simply _had_ to fly, whether or not one usually did - a tradition so old that the earliest recorded sport at Hogwarts had been an annual all-ages Halloween broom race to the far side of Hogsmeade and back.

Secrecy was loosened. For one golden evening a year, it was fully legal for a witch or wizard to announce they were such in simple language to any Muggle, so long as they themselves weren't in Muggle clothing at the time.

What Muggle couldn't shrug off a pointed hat, sparkling robes, or a broom glimpsed against the moon for a second on Halloween?

 _New moon, though,_ she reminded herself. _Night flying's not so fun with no moonlight._

She followed their hosts into the dining room where the feast waited on the table.

* * *

Lily stood at the big windows of the Hospital Wing, looking out on the Hogwarts grounds.

It was already growing dark, dark enough that the lights of Hogsmeade gleamed clearly in the distance.

She could hear the far-off noises of the Halloween Feast: the clinking of glasses, banging of plates, and the sounds of the Muggle-borns' delight at their first true Wizarding feast.

The first-year Welcoming Feast was always too anxious and stressful to be enjoyed, particularly taken as it was with strangers. By Halloween, the Muggle-borns were feasting beside friends.

 _At least, with friends who were Sorted the same way._ Lily had often wondered what it would do if the Halloween Feast was a mixed-table event, a celebration of all ways of being a witch or wizard instead of having the ever-present division of Sorting present, but it wasn't her place to even suggest such a thing.

She smiled from memory.

A dozen years since she'd been given her first hat. A dozen years since she had looked Eileen Snape in the eye and announced "I am a witch" proudly before announcing it to the entire Spinner's End area while running from door to door with Sev flapping like a bat behind her.

(It had been the first day he'd ever been allowed to tell anyone outside his family that he was a wizard. Eileen had overlooked the offense of telling Lily in her delight at no longer being the only witch within fifteen minutes' steady flight.)

Granted, Lily had still barely believed it, and needed constant reassurance from Severus until the day the letter came, but she'd claimed what she was for herself for the first time that day.

Her eyes felt damp. _I am a witch, no matter who my parents were. I am a potioneer, no matter what anyone thinks I should smell in_ amortentia _and no matter how long it's been since I brewed anything. This is my world, my husband's, and my son's, and no Dark Lord is going to take that or_ them _away from me._

The bell tolled six times.


	7. October 31, 1981 - 6 pm

The church bell began tolling six o'clock just before James and Sirius finally set the lightening charms on the duffel bags.

"You go first, Padfoot," James said. "I'll do one last Summoning Charm for loose hair just in case and be right behind you."

The sky beyond the drapes was dark. He could still hear the Muggle children in the street, and he knew that if he walked to the window and looked out, he would see them and their parents walking from door to door, carrying full bags of sweets and electric torches.

He smiled grimly to himself at the thought. Lily'd been so amused when she first introduced him to the things and he had assumed that meant not that Muggles didn't have eternal fires or smokeless fires like wizards and witches did, but that they had somehow failed to master the concept of 'fire on a stick' rather than abandoning it as the outdated technology it currently was for everyone.

Sirius nodded at him. "I'll go first. But you'd better be right behind me, Prongs." He threw the strap of one bag over his shoulder, grabbed the one the cat was riding by the handles, and strode into the fireplace.

He kept his voice almost inaudible as he said, "Albus Dumbledore's Office."

* * *

Sirius came through into Dumbledore's office to find the elderly wizard waiting for him.

"James is coming after me. He needed to do one last thing."

Lily's cat meowed at them plaintively. She looked at Fawkes for a moment, swishing her tail like a lioness hunting in tall grass and tucking her ears back, but quickly decided that phoenix was not on the evening's menu.

"Lily and Remus are in the Hospital Wing, Sirius. I have no doubts they can explain everything you need to know once you arrive there, and I am sure Lily will be glad to know that Jenny is safe."

Sirius had never understood why Jennyanydots mattered so much to Lily, besides the fact she was the most enduring gift the witch had from her now-deceased parents. A witch's familiar was supposed to be close to the witch, but Lily and Jenny...

Well, it was the closest relationship Sirius had ever seen between a witch and a _Muggle-bred_ cat, and truthfully the cat had only remained in Godric's Hollow because Harry was still there. Jenny seemed to be more guardian and companion than anything else, even now that Lily was married.

Jenny jumped down to the floor once Sirius had walked down the last flight of stairs, and she set off through the corridors as if she'd never left Hogwarts at all.

Sirius followed her.

He knew the way to the Hospital Wing well, having been there himself many times and having had to check on his friends there many times as well.

 _And Regulus,_ he had to admit. Having a Seeker for a brother meant any number of unwanted trips after a broom accident to write home truthfully to their mother that yes Regulus was still in one piece, no the Headmaster wasn't covering up a horrific maiming of her little baby, and of course Regulus' handwriting had changed, what did she expect after he'd taken yet another direct Bludger strike to the wrist? And, more often than not, gone on to catch the Snitch _with that hand_.

At least James had the sense to dodge. At least James had been a Chaser, which meant not always being a target - only when he had the Quaffle, or had scored impressive goals already that match. Seekers were _always_ targets.

And James' parents had the good sense to believe the official letter home.

The familiar doors came into view, and then he was there. Jenny was already scratching and meowing at the door, but apparently no one inside was close enough to hear her.

Sirius pushed the door open with a quiet, "There you go," to the frustrated feline.

"Jenny!"

Sirius stepped into the long room.

Lily was standing next to a window, alone.

"Sirius!" Her face lit up, but then her eyes grew firm. "Sirius, where is my husband? Don't tell me he's trying to..."

"He's coming through after one last bit of cleaning up. What happened? Dumbledore wouldn't tell me anything."

Remus walked out of Madame Pomfrey's office, and Sirius could see Madame Pomfrey sitting with Harry at her desk.

The healer might have been gruff towards all students, but she'd been present to help when Harry was born and that meant something.

 _And if he ever starts playing Quidditch, and he will, it'll mean she's that much harder on him afterward._

"You know the Ministry has been trying to get a spy into the Death Eaters?"

"Of course I know that. They've been trying to get one in for over a decade, and thanks to the _Daily Prophet_ it's been public knowledge for nearly as long."

"The trick isn't to get a spy _in_."

"Oh?" Sirius was intrigued.

He'd heard Crouch had authorized Unforgiveables for the Aurors least likely to lose themselves to Dark Magic because of using them, but he'd never heard of even the strongest, most experienced Aurors managing to make an Imperious Curse stick for more than a few minutes on Death Eaters. Hangers-on, yes. Those Voldemort trusted with anything of value, no.

Had a curse finally stuck and held?

"The trick is to get a spy _out_."

Sirius shook his head. "Not possible. Everyone knows no one leaves. Anyone thinking of it gets killed before they can get information outside. He finds out."

Lily quietly said, "This time he didn't. Just suspected. He was watching the Ministry, not the Order."

"Oh. Oh sweet Merlin, this changes _everything_."

"The spy was either detected or too closely suspected Thursday night, Sirius," Remus told him quite bluntly. "Multiple Cruciatus Curses, all uncountered, and he doesn't know how many. He bailed, assuming that he'd been found out, and took an opening that presented itself to him to get out of there. Hours on the Knight Bus later, he arrived here."

"Damn. No more spy?"

"If he hadn't left," Lily said firmly, "Harry and James and I would all be in Godric's Hollow none the wiser that danger was coming. He didn't overhear a comment about Peter until he was already on his way out."

The thought chilled Sirius, and he shook himself lightly to get the feeling off himself.

"So really, it's a good thng for us that he did leave. And if he hadn't managed to wake up when he did..."

" _That's_ what Dumbledore had you doing?"

"He wasn't exactly going to announce from the Astronomy Tower that we'd until recently had a spy in the Death Eaters, was he?" Remus countered. "He had to keep things quiet, which is why he's not let anyone who knows head back to Godric's Hollow now that the risk to the house is known."

"And you two both already know who it is."

"Exactly so." Remus' voice was full of pride - Sirius was usually the one who knew more than his friend the werewolf, not the other way around.

"Well?"

They both stared at him, Jenny joining in a moment later from the foot of the bed closest to Lily.

"Who is it?"

Remus grinned. "You're not going to believe it."

"Try me. Even though, now that I turn my mind to it, I can't say I know of any known Death Eaters I'd consider potential turncoats, not after that apparent purge while we were still in school."

Remus beckoned him forward, through Madame Pomfrey's office and into the room beyond.

One person, lying on a bed, looking far worse than Sirius himself had felt the time he'd gotten hit three times and been pinned down and penned in so long that the counters to the long-term effects of the spell had done next to nothing for him.

Despite whatever Crouch was saying about the needs of battle, Sirius knew in his heart that no one - no one ever, no matter who, not even Grindelwald in his cell in Nurmengard, ever deserved to look that way.

 _And if anyone ever did that to Grindelwald, I'd expect the entire continent to erupt with complaints that there was no way he could sit and think about all the bad things he'd done and feel remorse and give them some proper revenge if he was in that much apparent pain - too much to focus on the world._

Pain was a very limited tool in a world with the Body-Bind Curse, ways to make a room truly escape-proof, and the simple possibility of depriving someone of a wand for the rest of his life. Pain? Not a proper wizard's vengeance. Locking someone in an impassable room in his own prison, never to so much as see magic performed again, and never to see another human beyond strictly selected jailers? Sirius' mother and father had spoken quite highly of the judge who thought that one up.

The black hair nearly covered the man's face, and it was clear it had been combed through by fingers recently instead of properly brushed.

Out of the side of his eye, Sirius recognized the familiar combination of Remus with a camera, and quietly wondered just what reaction Remus was trying to capture for posterity.

The former spy was still breathing unevenly. Sirius remembered that from his own experience - the temporary nerve disruptions that started on the start of the second day made deep breaths painful, but sooner or later, you needed to take one anyway.

And then he made out the outline of the nose through the hair.

"WHAT IN THE NAME OF MERLIN'S GRANDMOTHER BESSIE IS GOING ON HERE?"

'Click' went the camera.

Snivellus was the last person Sirius would have expected.

Snivellus, who had known more about the Dark Arts at age eleven than most of the sixth years with Es on their Defense OWLs.

Snivellus, who had been giving at least as good as he got in informal duels and schoolyard scrapes since _maybe_ this time their first year.

Snivellus! Of all people! He'd have expected Regulus before Snivellus, and Regulus had been keeping a scrapbook of pro-Voldemort press clippings in his bedroom since he was eight years old and their mother finally decided he was old enough to be trusted with scissors charmed to not damage flesh!

 _How in the world,_ why _in the world..._

Snivellus opened his eyes. "I'm not explaining until all the Potter family is safely here," he mumbled before closing his eyes again.

Nothing made sense to Sirius anymore.

Wormtail a traitor? Snivellus a turncoat against the darkness? What next, the castle bells tolling thirteen?

The bell tolled once a moment later, to Sirius' partial relief that at least _something_ was still as it ought to be. Six-thirty, and if James was in the castle he certainly hadn't made it to the Hospital Wing yet.


	8. Leaving The House

The minute Sirius went through the fireplace, James Potter had begun his spell.

What he hadn’t told Sirius, however, was that he wasn’t using a standard Summoning Charm to clear the unswept corners of the cottage.

This was older, and while on one hand it was much more complicated, that meant it was also more thorough.

Thorough was what counted now.

Unfortunately, that meant he was only now completing the base work for it, with the street completely dark except for the electric streetlights – here and there flickering from the disruption of too many magical families living close together on a side street, a normal enough sight in Godric’s Hollow that the Muggles had stopped trying to fix the lights - and the sounds of the trick-or-treating Muggle children reduced from full scream to dull roar.

He knew from past attacks on others in the Order and Sirius’ Auror coworkers that the Death Eaters favored the depths of night. They would come in force at midnight or later, when the adults in the house are either asleep or nearly there, and therefore cut the potential resistance by half or more.

It was only six-thirty. The Muggles were out and about. The magical families were visiting amongst themselves, feasting behind drawn and warded drapes. There was time.

He lowered his wand for a moment and tried to feel the sense of the groundwork he’d just laid.

Good. He’d done it correctly. Apart from a few much smaller trial runs, his experience with the entire _branch_ of magical lore he was exploiting tonight was purely theoretical in nature.

He waved his wand in a particular fashion, thinking of strands of hair and tangles in corners and little clumps of dust and dander in the corners of rooms.

A steady stream of detritus flew through the air and into a small sack he’d prepared for that purpose.

 _Excellent_.

Now, if he could just get out of Godric’s Hollow and teach that trick to enough Aurors and members of the Order...

He put the sack in the last of the duffels and secured the opening at last.

Time to go.

James couldn’t resist – he had to have one last look out the front window of the home Harry had lived his first year in. It was a father thing, and therefore he doubted Sirius or Remus would understand.

James slightly parted the drapes and looked outside.

His blood ran cold.

A tall man, walking alone – at this hour on Halloween, what Muggle or Wizarding adult would be alone with no child and no friends?  - making his way down the street.

James recognized his gait in an instant. It was the proper aristocratic pureblood step that both he and Sirius often used, Sirius more often. They had been raised to it, had been taught how to maintain it since the day their mothers and fathers had decided they were stable enough on their feet to manage learning it.

Only the tall man wasn’t walking with the easy loping ‘I am a pureblood despite my _choice_ of lifestyles’ variant James used or the natural ‘I was born to this’ ease Sirius still managed as a (disowned) son of the Noble House Of Black. It was stiffer, more exact, as if the man were trying to prove something to a sea of people who had no clue what a pureblood wizard _was._

  _Half-blood with delusions of grandeur_ , he thought. _No pureblood over the age of ten would try that hard – the family name plus the faintest echo of the formal gait would be enough anywhere but a formal party, a wedding, a funeral, the Ministry, or one’s own Sorting._

James saw a Muggle child run close to the man.

He knew what the child must be trying to do. He and Lily had spent the first Halloween of their marriage – the only one they’d been living out in the open for – walking through Muggle neighborhoods, and there had been many a ‘Nice costume’ for her semi-formal navy blue robes.

Only this time, the child backpedaled and ran.

 _It’s him. What’s one more scary man in the street on Halloween night?_

James drew back from the window.

He had minutes left – there was no sign Voldemort knew they’d had any warning at all.

  _Sweet Merlin, he’s hunting us_ himself _..._

The only thing left unpacked was the jar of Floo Powder. James had been planning on just leaving it there – Dumbledore would no doubt shut the connection to the Floo Network the second he was through and into his office – but with Voldemort this close, he just couldn’t take the risk.

He put one bag strap over each shoulder, keeping the weight balanced, and walked into the fireplace, tucking his wand into his pocket.

He thought he heard the front gate creak open.

James took the open jar of Floo Powder in his right hand, not bothering to take a handful out.

 _If I can just time this right..._

The door blew in.

Voldemort charged in to the completely bare house, wand already drawn.

James closed his eyes and turned the jar over. "Dumbledore's office!"

He could see the flash of green through his eyelids.


	9. Back To Hogwarts

James was not in the habit of going flying without a broom, and especially _not_ indoors.

It was therefore a good thing that Dumbledore was waiting just beside the fireplace and caught him with a momentum-shedding spell before he had the chance to hit the bookcases on the far wall.

"Close it," he pleaded from where he landed – softly – on the stone floor.

Dumbledore was done with the controlled collapse of the enchantment by the time James got his breath back to semi-normal.

"What happened?" Dumbledore asked him.

"I dumped the entire jar of Floo Powder in the fire."

Dumbledore looked as stern as James had ever seen him. "That was foolish."

James shook his head. "He came. Alone. He used the trick-or-treaters for cover – the Muggles just thought he was another man in a scary mask. He was halfway through the door when I came through the Floo. The explosion on that end should have at least singed him a bit."

Dumbledore's eyes softened again. "So he personally knows it was your family that was really there, and not a false lead."

James nodded. "If he didn't already, he certainly does now. We completely emptied the house, down to the dust bunnies. If he wanted to make Polyjuice Potion to trick either of us out into the open, he's going to be lacking a component." He didn't tell Dumbledore he had a new magical procedure for doing it – he wanted to run a few more trials himself and then give Lily and Sirius a chance to try first.

"Good."

"Where's Lily?"

There was a far-off noise, not entirely unlike a bitten-back scream.

"What was that?" James' heart was racing again. It sounded like a man, but that still meant it could be Remus or Sirius... and Lily could be next.

"I don't know, James. But I think I have an idea. Shall we go see?"

* * *

Dumbledore led James towards the Hospital Wing.

"Be prepared for a bit of a shock," he warned, but there was still a twinkle in his eyes. "Our world is not the same place it was when you last left these halls."

Of course it wasn't. Voldemort had already been on the rise then, but to risk moving so completely in the open...

"Did Peter really...?"

"It appears so, James. I can think of no other explanation for the events of the past three days, and it was by sheer coincidence and luck that we heard of it in time."

"Or it was meant to be," James mumbled.

He didn't want to think too hard right now about what might have happened if he hadn't looked out the window one last time.

"That too," Dumbledore allowed.

"How _did_ we find out?"

"The Order had a spy among the Death Eaters," Dumbledore said softly. "And within the week, the world is likely to have figured that out."

"'Had'?" Whoever it was... the risk involved... James was fairly sure Voldemort hadn't managed to recruit many Gryffindors into the Death Eaters, but it looked like there had been at least one.

 _Who else would have recognized Peter?_ he reasoned with himself. Peter Pettigrew was one of those wizards who just blended in wherever he was – neither impressive enough nor inept enough to stand out particularly well, and possessing physical features and a set of wardrobe preferences that let him blend into almost any crowd.

"If his cover wasn't blown before he left – and it may well have been – it most certainly is now. He left, wandless, after being cruciated multiple times, and managed to get to the Hog's Head by Knight Bus some hours later."

 _Definitely a Gryffindor. Now, who of my house are known to have joined Voldemort's forces...?_

James couldn't think of anyone.

"That's why I needed to borrow Lily. He collapsed and wouldn't wake with any method I dared risk. How many others in the Order..."

"...would be willing to simply accept word that a Death Eater was on our side without extensive proof?"

Dumbledore chuckled. "And without seeking revenge for anything _any_ Death Eater had done against her, as well."

James nodded. More than a few things came to mind, starting with the day Snape had called her a...

Oh, he didn't even want to think about his wife being called that to her face, much less by someone she had trusted so much for so long. Behind her back and among less open-minded purebloods was bad enough.

"So he's talking?"

"Quite coherently, in fact, despite the fact it was nearly 48 hours between the first curse and the first counter."

James felt himself blanch.

Counters to the Cruciatus Curse weren't _true_ counterspells, of course, but instead attempts at stopping a chain reaction of physical responses to that much magically-induced pain. After two days, that chain reaction was nearly complete and there wasn't much left to do but recognize magical pain relievers weren't a good idea in the circumstances and leave the victim to simply endure the lingering effects. Chocolate could help a little, but not nearly enough.

There was an uncomfortable feeling as James understood he'd just had actual _pity_ for a Death Eater.

Former _Death Eater_ , he reminded himself. _Whoever it was, he's left Voldemort's side now. And the Cruciatus Curse is something no one should have to endure, no matter who they are or what they've done. The Dark Arts are the Dark Arts._

 _And I owe him the lives of my family, including myself and my only child._

There were requirements for dealing with debt like that among purebloods, and given everything that was involved there just wasn't a way out of following the ancient pattern so far as James could figure it.

And besides, treating the preserved lives of a Muggle-born wife and half-blood son in the same manner as if they had been aristocratic purebloods... It would get out eventually and tell a clear tale about how different the Order's purebloods were from Voldemort's pureblood supremacists.

Despite the risk to himself – there was a tradition about what to do as the owed party, but there was nothing to bind anyone to following it other than social shame and what kind of stop was _that_ on a former Death Eater? – James felt he _had_ to follow the pattern. The future gains to the Order were too great to throw away.

They were at the doors to the Hospital Wing now, and Dumbledore pushed them inward on their hinges.

The castle clock was tolling seven merrily into the night, and nothing would ever be the same as it might have been again.


	10. In the Hospital Wing

Five seconds after Dumbledore opened the door and James took a step into the Hospital Wing, Lily had her arms around his neck.

It had only taken that long because she'd been on the far side of the room, looking out one of the tall windows.

"JAMES!"

He wrapped his own arms around her, holding her close and pressing his face down into her shoulder, suddenly very aware of just how close he had come to death in the last half an hour.

 _If I hadn't already been in the fireplace... If I hadn't looked out the window right then..._

He had defied Voldemort in the past, of course. They both had. But never _alone,_ and usually at a distance.

Denying a written request to enter a Dark Lord's service, no matter what illustrious ancestor's crest adorned it, was entirely different from blowing up a house in his face.

And James Potter was quite sure that he _had_ blown up the house. If his magically-induced momentum was anything to go by, the cottage in Godric's Hollow might not have a roof anymore. It certainly did not have the rooms that had been near the chimney anymore, and the fireplace itself was likely brick powder mixed with pulverized mortar now.

He almost wished it were safe to go back, if only for the sake of knowing what the upward limits of Floo Powder were in combat. The normal handful caused a slight breeze, but what did the whole jar do?

Not that the Wizarding world particularly _needed_ a replacement for black powder, but since the stuff was ubiquitous in magical homes anyway... Given his 'job' was being an independent Defense expert for the Order with no official ties to the Ministry, he couldn't help but wonder.

Lily was the first to push away. "You got everything?"

"Down to the smallest hair. He doesn't have a way to use Polyjuice Potion against us."

She relaxed against him. "Good."

James heard Dumbledore slip back out and the big heavy doors close behind him.

Sirius was walking over now, Remus following him with Harry held against his shoulder. Both men had been in Madame Pomfrey's office.

(One of the sadder aspects of Remus' lycanthropy was that so few Wizarding mothers – both witches and the Muggle wives of wizards - would let him near their children, even at this safest part of the month. Remus was a natural with children, but he got so few chances to show it.)

"Got out just in time," he told Sirius as he hugged Lily again.

"Who came?" Remus asked.

"He came himself, alone."

Lily was sobbing into his shoulder with apparent terror at how close she'd come to losing him, Remus was quiet but his eyes were filled with worry, and Sirius was talking under his breath.

"We could have had him. If there had just been enough time to contact Crouch, or get members of the Order in position there..." He trailed off into minor cursing. Remus was kind enough to tuck Harry's shirt collar over the boy's ears, trying to keep the child's fifth word from being something Lily'd never forgive any of them for.

"I dumped the entire jar of Floo Powder on the fire." Lily tried to calm herself and Sirius stopped his stream of complaints at the universe. "I think I probably singed him a bit."

"'A bit'? James, that was almost a new jar!" Lily fretted.

"And judging from what I've heard about Dark Marks," Sirius added, "he's _angry_."

It was then that James noticed the sound coming from beyond Madame Pomfrey's office. It wasn't exactly a moan or a groan, but it was certainly from the same general exclamatory family.

He suddenly understood just what the shriek he'd heard in Dumbledore's office had been – the Order's escaped Death Eater spy, paying a price of pain without warning for James' humiliation of his former lord.

Voldemort's action, but James' responsibility nonetheless. A man who had already been tortured that very week had felt pain from nowhere without known cause because of something he, James Potter, had done.

(It was becoming strangely easy to accept the fact he felt pity for a Death Eater, but after hearing that shriek... whoever it was _deserved_ pity.)

"So, who do I owe for the lives of my family?"

Sirius seemed suddenly uncomfortable. "Um, mate, you might not want to..."

James looked his friend in the eye. They were both purebloods and had both been raised with the knowledge of old Wizarding traditions they would be expected to follow as adults.

This was one of them.

"Who do I owe?" he asked again. "For my life, and my wife's, and the only child of my line, the last of my House's name?"

Sirius' eyes widened slightly.

 _That's right, Sirius. The House of Potter is one generation away from being extinct in the male line, and as far as_ Nature's Nobility _is concerned, we already_ are _._

Lily sighed. "James..."

Remus was very quiet.

"Who do I owe?"

Lily took Harry from Remus and the three friends walked the length of the room.

James was very aware that Sirius and Remus had gotten in front of him and were just tall enough that he couldn't quite see past their heads to get a good view beyond Madame Pomfrey's office door.

She was sitting there in her desk chair, and if James was not entirely mistaken she had braced herself in anticipation of whatever might be about to happen.

No matter. The Malfoys and Lestranges did not have a monopoly on following Wizarding tradition, and the Potters owed a debt.

"Who do I owe?" he called out. "Who do I owe for my life? For the life of my wife? For the life of a child barely walking, the last of my forefathers' line? Who do I owe, for I, James of the House of Potter, wish to repay the debt? Name anything, and it shall be considered."

Sirius flinched.

James thought he saw in the corner of his eye the movement of Remus pulling a camera out of his robes.

Madame Pomfrey stood, wand out.

James was struck with the thought that whatever was about to happen was not going to be pleasant.

Someone stirred on one of the beds, and a not entirely unfamiliar voice asked, "'Anything'?"

 _Can't be..._

Remus' camera went 'click'.


	11. The Request

There was a tense quiet moment where everyone was still.

James was very aware of how many others present had their hands near their wands.

He didn't join them.

Snape was wandless - there was no way he'd obtained a replacement while in this state, and if he had an extra backup stashed somewhere he'd have had no way to retrieve it. Snape was also the recent victim of torture, and James had a feeling there was a reason he hadn't been sitting up with so many people in and out of the room today.

There was no need for a wand against an unarmed man who might not even be able to stand up. Even without the debt, it would have been an offense against his heritage and his Sorting to pull a wand now.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd been functionally disarmed around Snape, even at the distance between them now.

Snape moved a bit, and James suddenly understood that the other wizard was waiting for confirmation before making his demand.

 _He wants to make me acknowledge the noose I just walked into._

"Anything will be considered," he replied, repeating his exact words. He wasn't about to give a member of Slytherin House an inch more ground than he had to.

Snape grunted, and if James wasn't completely mistaken he sounded rather amused.

 _Damn it. Just get your revenge, and leave Lily and Harry enough to survive!_

James had never been more aware that Lily did not have the protection of a Wizarding dowry that most wives of purebloods had, even that most halfblood witches had, a dowry that no promise of her husband could legally pledge away from her and her child.

Lily was a housewife who worked on the side for a secret non-governmental organization that intentionally did not keep paperwork on its members' involvement. James could make no argument that anything in the Potter family vault at Gringotts was hers by right of earning, certainly not in an argument the goblins would respect.

"An apology." The words were barely audible and extremely serious.

There was a general reaction of disbelief in the room.

 _An offer of anything from the lone remaining adult wizard of the House of Potter, with the entirety of my family's remaining wealth under my sole control, and he asks for an_ apology _. Nothing more._

 _He's a Slytherin. It has to be a trick. There has to be a catch somewhere. There's_ always _a catch somewhere._

"An apology. For?"

"For _everything_." Snape moved, then stopped, and James realized Snape was trying to turn to face him and too weak to manage it.

 _This could take a while._ "Sirius, mind holding my wand for a moment?"

Sirius took the offered wand while giving James his best 'hope you know what you're doing' look.

"Thanks, mate."

James walked over without hesitation and sat on the edge of the next bed over from Snape, the one he was already facing.

If James couldn't defend himself against a disarmed man suffering from the after-effects of multiple Cruciatus Curses without the aid of a wand, he didn't deserve the marks he'd gotten on his Defense OWL and NEWT.

"Snape, I'm not apologizing for the sun rising this morning and setting this evening. You're going to have to narrow down what 'everything' means for me to consider granting that request."

"Judging a child for wanting to be sorted the same way as his mother. Judging a child for technical knowledge he could not have and had not yet put to any use, whether for good or for ill. Doing your best to drive a child away from the only other Wizarding youngster he had ever known, the closest he friend he ever had."

 _You proved me right, you bastard. You were obsessed with the Dark Arts then, and look where it's gotten you now._

"Making it so that a child had little choice but to look for allies who could hold you off for a while, no matter who. No matter what they thought of him. No matter what they thought of the one friend he had."

Sirius jerked back. "What?"

"I'm a loner by nature, Black. A few firm associations with other humans, and I'm happy. Do any of you honestly think _I_ would have spent time in the Slytherin Common Room with the company I ended up keeping if it had been _safe_ for me to be in the library alone? Turned out most of them didn't bother using the handful of brain cells they _did_ have because their fathers were - not that I knew then - the Dark Lord's earliest followers. They had guaranteed jobs after they sat their NEWTs."

Snape's voice had gotten weaker as he spoke, and James was amazed at how much he'd said given how injured he obviously was.

"Wait. Mulciber? Avery? Their fathers are Death Eaters?"

"Part of the innermost circle, Black, his loyal servants since he was a Slytherin prefect. You're an Auror and you didn't know that?"

"Snape," James said, "I'm the one Defense expert in the Order of the Phoenix without ties to the Ministry and _I_ didn't know that."

"I didn't tell Albus because I thought everybody knew that by now." There was a clear tone of horror in Snape's voice. "And I don't think they were ever involved in anything I've reported to him..."

"We'll make sure he knows," James told him. "And why you hadn't mentioned it before."

An odd kind of fear entered Snape's eyes, even as the wizard apparently struggled to keep them open.

James must have looked confused at that, for Snape whispered, "You've never seen him angry, have you?"

It was that which finally and completely brought home for James Potter what different lives they both had led. James followed a leader who smiled at a child trying to take his glasses away, and Snape...

Snape had been cruciated not three days ago by someone he'd sworn his allegiance to, and even if he had been fated to follow Dark paths on his own, even if he would have ultimately been a blood-status bigot anyway... it was _James_ who had given him the earliest pushes towards Voldemort's service.

It was entirely possible he could have been redeemable before they took their NEWTs or would have been one of the hundreds of Dark-leaning wizards worldwide who never actually did all that much harm to anyone but themselves - if things had gone differently.

And _this_ pain of _this_ wizard lying in _this_ bed on _this_ day struggling for the strength to keep talking in _this_ moment suddenly seemed to James as much his own fault as if he had raised the wand himself.


	12. Deceptive Appearances

The Longbottoms and Weasleys were halfway through the second course when someone knocked at the door.

It wasn't unknown for friends to show up unannounced on Halloween, though Arthur knew that the tradition was fading now with attacks on the rise. A group would go for an evening flight, say to themselves, 'Isn't that Barnabas' house? Let's go see what he's got to eat!' and the next thing Barnabas knew, he'd be sharing his feast.

Arthur's mother had always thought it was that which had made the Halloween Feast the grandest of the year - one had to make sure there was more than enough on the table for extra mouths, after all.

Molly's brothers, peace be on their souls, had been certain that tradition had led to the Muggle practice of Trick Or Treating.

Everyone's wands were out a moment later.

There was a sound from upstairs, and a moment later Augusta Longbottom came down the stairs.

"I'll check," Arthur offered as the elderly witch entered the dining room.

The Longbottoms and Molly braced themselves just inside the door to the dining room. _One really can never be_ too _careful these days._

Arthur walked to the door and called through it, "Hello?"

"Happy Halloween, Mr. Weasley!" He recognized the voice of the younger Barty Crouch instantly. He'd only had to deal with the hanger-on constantly at the Ministry, trying to ply his father's post and his own impressive qualifications (Twelve OWLs. _Twelve._ ) into a position of influence. Frank and Alice had to know him as well, through their jobs as Aurors under the man's father.

It made sense he would be here, knocking at their door.

Except... No. The Longbottoms had nothing to offer him. If he was going to share a Halloween Feast, he would have gotten himself an invitation weeks ago and would have picked a host with power he could borrow or use to increase his own. This was not like Bartemius Crouch, Jr. at all.

Something wasn't right.

Arthur flicked his wand and whispered, " _Hominem revelio._ "

A split-second later, he yelled, "Incoming!"

* * *

"I'm sorry," James found himself whispering.

"I'm not done yet," Snape ground out weakly, though without apparent malice.

"Rest a moment, if you need to," James told him. "I've got nowhere else to be tonight."

The others left the room quietly, Sirius placing James' wand within reaching distance on the cot before he followed. It was clear enough now, James figured, that this discussion was not going to come to blows and that it was intensely personal.

Besides, Sirius needed to tell Albus about Avery and Mulciber's fathers.

It was some time later before Snape asked him in a much stronger voice, "Do you know what happens when someone spends their time around blood supremacists, Potter?"

"No, I don't know."

"It starts to creep in. No matter what that person actually believes, it creeps in. The Muggles and Muggle-borns he is familiar with become exceptions to what the others supposedly are like. The words start to creep into thoughts and then..."

"Something gets them to come out in the open."

"Potter, I grew up in the bad part of an all-Muggle town, practically Knockturn Alley for the not-magic. My father was a Muggle who worked at the textile mill. The men in the rest of the row drank away the pain from the mill owners bringing in foreign workers to compete for their jobs. I learned before I did accidental magic just how to tell in a woman's eyes whether her husband was dangerous when he'd had enough left of his paycheck for a beer or three, whether she wanted anyone to know or not. My family survived by my mother doing potions work for hire, few questions asked. She could have had my job - Slughorn's job, back then - in a heartbeat of applying, except that no one who knew her growing up would give character references to a blood traitor and she knew it. That was my world, Potter. Avery, Mulciber, Malfoy, the others? They talked me into believing the mill owners were the rule rather than the exception, that the man next door who beat his wife every time he drank was a Muggle in their natural state instead of someone so lost in pain and the wrongs done to him that he was falling apart trying to make sense of where it was coming from. And thanks to the foreign workers, I had been raised in a xenophobic environment." A pause. "You do know what that word means, right?"

"Yes, I know what the word 'xenophobic' means," James bit out through his shock.

 _That_ was the world Snape had gone home to every holiday? Not a neighborhood like Lily's? He'd known they lived in the same town, eventually, and that Mrs. Snape's family were purebloods of some minor wealth, but not that the Snape family itself...

Suddenly a number of things he'd taunted Snape about - his clothing, the way he used his mother's old textbooks whenever he could get away with it, his choice to spend most Hogsmeade weekends holed up in the library, the simple fact that Potions equipment seemed to be the only major school supplies he ever bought new - took on a very different air.

Severus just hadn't had the pocket money for Hogsmeade - the library was free, and it let him do the studying James wouldn't have let him do alone without fear at any other time. His mother's textbooks were free. She would have known the dangers of used cauldrons, and skimped to keep her son safe from that danger even as she passed him her old quills.

And it had all been because Mrs. Snape fell in love with a Muggle and the section of pureblood society her own family belonged to didn't want to accept that.

Sons of Death Eaters had allowed Severus into their circle in spite of all that. James Potter _hadn't_.

"The day we sat our Defense OWL? That was the first time that slur ever crossed my lips."

"You should be telling Lily this," James managed to say.

"I already did."


	13. Witches

"I... I didn't know any of that," James said after a moment.

"Of course you didn't. I didn't want anyone to know. I wanted Hogwarts to be a fresh start around people like me. Not that it happened that way..."

"I'm sorry."

This time, Severus seemed to accept it.

"She was like my sister. I didn't have the words for it because I don't have siblings, my father's brothers died before I was five, and my mother's family... well. She was like my little kid sister, big enough to get into trouble but not understanding enough yet to keep away from it."

"Lily's only what, a month younger than you?"

"And didn't start hearing anything about the Wizarding world until she was nine."

"Nine? I thought the professors didn't come until..."

"Nine. I watched her. I told her. We and my mum, we were the only witches and wizard around. Eleven years ago tonight, Mum gave her her first hat. We were ten. Did she ever tell you?"

James had to shake his head. "No, she didn't." _She didn't even tell me she found out she was a witch from you._

"It was the one night any of us could say what we were, without looking over our shoulders. Mum gave Lily her first hat, charmed it so the tip would stay up, and we ran through the entire neighborhood begging for sweets and declaring we were a witch and a wizard." The corner of his mouth twitched up. "Mum gave me a peppermint stick for a wand, since I wasn't allowed a real one yet. I made it last for a month."

James had always thought himself lucky if he managed to stretch one out for a night - Muggle candy had been rare in the Potter home, but it was quiet and didn't do anything to attract attention to itself, perfect for dinner-spoiling and midnight sugar-binges. He couldn't say that for Ice Mice.

"I wish I'd had more Muggle candy like that growing up," he found himself saying.

Severus snorted weakly. "You? When did you ever want for anything? The much doted on last of the Potter line?"

"Who found himself showered with Wizard candy that can't be snuck at night because it squeaks or jumps. And may I remind you that grand as Every Flavor Beans may be, Jelly Babies do not come in Boogey and Stewed Peas."

Severus laughed once. "One of the first-years got a lutefisk one last week. Half-blood, she's used to the gourmet Muggle varieties. She thought it was likely to be coconut." He sighed. "There are times I don't like explaining what being in the Wizarding world full-time means."

"So you really are Head of Slytherin. I'd half thought it to be only a rumor."

"For now. It's traditional for the Potion Master to be, given the proximity of the labs to the Common Room. Quicker to run for emergencies." His face fell.

"What's wrong?"

"Heads of Houses have to be able to leave the grounds, Potter. Even if Albus lets me stay..."

"Why wouldn't he?"

Severus shot him a look that was equal parts exasperation and pity. "He hired me when I became his spy. I'm not a spy anymore, not when the Dark Lord knows what I've gone and done."

"Albus wouldn't..."

"You've never seen him when he was angry."

And it was true. James hadn't. Grieved by some bad turn in the war, yes. Deep in thought at the depths to which men who were once children entrusted to his care had fallen, yes.

Angry, no.

* * *

It was a widely understood maxim of Wizarding society that there were some things just not worth the risk of doing.

Crossing a witch mother with a child under the age of accidental magic was near the top of the list.

Crossing two witch mothers, one with said child in the house and the other the sister of Gideon and Fabian Prewett? Even worse.

Doing that while part of a fighting team that included no fewer than two of the five Death Eaters known to have survived the Prewett murders? Better to steal the clutch of a nesting dragon.

That was counting out the fathers, both present, and one Augusta Longbottom, former amateur duelist.

The red burst flew from a wand and over the lawn towards the retreating figure.

She twisted in place just as the spell reached her.

 **Crack.**

The spell shot off into the dark and set one of Alice's prized rosebushes on fire when it reached the garden.

"COME BACK AND FIGHT, YOU BITCH!"

Three bodies lay in the grass, one twitching and two as still as the night ought to have been.

Molly marched out over the grass, as if she could follow her final opponent.

"Molly! You can't track where she's gone, and who knows who's there with her!" Augusta called out.

Somewhere behind her, Neville was screaming at the commotion.

Molly spared a moment to put out the rose bush.

Frank was checking the bodies, Alice casting spells beside him. "Well, the Lestrange brothers are dead."

Molly gave out a little sob. _Two down, my brothers._

Arthur was standing over the twitching well-dressed aristocratic form of one Bartemius Crouch, Jr. "So, who wants to draw straws to contact his father? Alice? Frank?"

"Are we even sure he wasn't just under the Imperious Curse?" Alice asked hopefully as she stood up and retied her shawl around her shoulders.

"We're sure." Arthur pointed down at Barty's arm. "I've got it on good authority from Albus Dumbledore that it takes true allegiance to You-Know-Who to get one of those.

Molly saw the black smudge even from where she stood, dim but clearly there in the wandlights turned towards where spells had ripped open his left sleeve down to skin.

"Whether the Ministry will accept that or not, I don't know."

"I need to go see to Neville," Alice declared before rushing back inside.

No one tried to stop her - getting between a witch with the fight raised in her already and her crying toddler was an easy way to get introduced to some very nasty curses, even if that witch was normally as mild-mannered as Mrs. Longbottom.

"Arthur," Frank said tentatively, "given the fact I'm an Auror, and given, well, your family..."

Molly heard her husband sigh, "Better he hear from someone who isn't a blood-traitor with a dead-end job in the glorified closet that is the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office."

"Quite."

"Good luck."

Frank marched toward the point Bellatrix had Apparated from, just outside the border of the family wards. **Crack.**

"Good thing we were all here tonight," Augusta commented. "Five against four's much better than two against four, even if my Frank's one of the two." Barty started to twitch more coherently, and she shot another Stunning Spell at him. "Shouldn't you two be off to check on the safety of your own brood?"

"No worries there, dear," Molly told her. "Muriel prizes her valuables so much that she's got wards protecting her wards."

"And we doubled the protections on the Burrow when the rumor there was a leak in the Order started up," Arthur whispered just loud enough to be heard. "And those were the protections we put up when the Potters..."

Augusta smiled grimly. "Good. And I think the defenses here were only breached because we thought young Mr. Crouch a friend to the family, so a quick integrity check should be enough."

Molly felt like collapsing in the Longbottoms' sitting room.

Disaster averted by the sheer luck of sharing a holiday meal for the first time in years.

A moment later, she stumbled through their front door and did just that.


	14. News From The Ministry

Sirius Black could not believe what he was seeing.

Albus Dumbledore was sitting behind his desk, glasses in one hand and the fingers of the other pinching the bridge of his nose. "We should have realized."

"Sir?" It was the most, well, un-Dumbledore gesture he'd ever seen the Headmaster make. That, and Dumbledore tended to be the sort of wizard who knew things years - even decades - before anyone else figured them out.

Hadn't he been the only professor to see through You-Know-Who in school? Sirius knew he'd heard his father say something to that effect late one night when he and Regulus were supposed to be asleep.

Hadn't it taken Dumbledore to figure out how to remove Grindelwald from power? Not just because of his strength, but also his mind?

"Tell Severus that I admit I should have already realized Avery and Mulciber Seniors were well within the inner circle, for the same reasons he believed I already had. And that I will be _making_ plenty of time in my schedule in the near future for him to tell me anything else he thinks I already know."

Sirius couldn't stop himself from shivering at the tone in Dumbledore's voice.

 _Just what is it like to get an adult interrogation, no matter how friendly, from the man who took Grindelwald's wand?_ The few 'and what were you thinking when you did that?' questionings he'd received as a student after learning about that duel had been hair-raising enough, even after he'd been offered a lemon drop.

Dumbledore put his glasses back on and sighed. "At least all of them are safe inside the wards now."

"I'd have never imagined leaving Godric's Hollow with Harry would be this non-disruptive to him."

"Why would it have been disruptive, at least this early? He still has his parents, he's not had a chance to learn to fear strangers because Lily has never let anyone she didn't trust inside the same room with him, and he's not had the chance to see that he won't be going back to the house that has been his entire world. Another week, and he may need reassurance." Dumbledore's eyes were twinkling again. "He's too fascinated right now to fear."

"Lucky him."

Albus Dumbledore nodded in grim agreement.

It was then that an owl begain tapping at the office window. Dumbledore got up and let it inside.

Sirius recognized her immediately - Crouch's secretary's personal owl, an elderly long-earred who had discolored tufts due to an unfortunate accident in Experimental Charms some years earlier that had also made her one of the fastest owls in the entire British Isles. "Evening, Selene," he said, offering an arm to her.

She landed on the desk instead, holding out her leg to Dumbledore.

Dumbledore took the note, and Selene hopped over to Sirius as he unrolled it.

Sirius scratched under her chin. "Crouch wants me back already?"

There was no answer.

"Sir?" Sirius looked up.

He instantly wished he hadn't.

"There's been an attack." He stood and strode towards the door, almost too fast for Sirius to catch up as Selene flew for the window, screeching out alarm at the sheer fury in the room.

* * *

Sirius had never imagined that Albus Dumbledore could still move that fast.

He had also never realized just how many flights of stairs there were between the Headmaster's Office and the Hospital Wing.

 _Even my Auror's training didn't include anything like this._

 _Maybe I should suggest it to Crouch. If there's ever a battle here, no one will be ready for the distances involved..._

He was very glad the students were already back in the dormitories, the Halloween Feast proper broken off at the first official news out of Godric's Hollow - Sirius still didn't know what the Ministry and _Daily Prophet_ were telling people - and split off into the Common Rooms for dessert.

The long halls and wide stairways of Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft and Wizardry were empty and silent except for Dumbledore's swift footsteps and Sirius' gasping as he desperately tried to keep the older wizard in view.

It was in some ways foolishness to follow so closely. He knew where Dumbledore was going - he even had a sinking feeling of why. He knew there was nothing at all he could do to stop Dumbledore no matter what he was going to do once there - Sirius was just one of the youngest Aurors in the department, and good as he was, he hadn't reached his own prime years yet and knew it.

But he had to. One of the basic rules of being an Auror was not letting anyone else charge off alone and angry, no matter why. It was defensive strategy and internal control method all in one action.

And Sirius had to see what would happen once Dumbledore got there.

He went straight through the big wooden doors, charged down the aisle between the beds, and through Madam Pompfrey's office.

Harry started crying, Jenny adding her yowling in case the clearly-distracted humans didn't bother to notice her mistress' son was in distress.

Madam Pomfrey picked Harry up and patted his back.

Remus and Lily joined Sirius as he continued to walk toward the door.

There was a very soft and very scared sound from beyond.

"Albus?" James asked faintly.

They finally made it through the office to find James looking up at Dumbledore and Snape looking like he'd be hiding under the cot if he had the strength left to move that far.

Sirius really couldn't blame him.

"There's been another attack. The Lovegoods thought they saw something, and when Xenophilius went to go look..."

Lily looked like she was about to fall over and James' face was white.

"The Burrow was burnt to the ground not an hour ago, with the Dark Mark in the sky. There are owls out trying to find Arthur and Molly. There's a chance they might have been out visiting, and there's no sign so far that anyone was there, but they've spent every Halloween at home since..."

"Since Bill was born," Lily finished, dabbing at her eyes.

Silence.

"I swear I hadn't heard anything. The Dark Lord wouldn't have ordered an attack besides his own for tonight."

"Retaliation?" Remus asked.

Snape barely shook his head. Sirius realized he was clutching his left arm. "I don't think he's fit to order that at the moment." There was a frightened note of amazement in his voice. "Someone's acting without orders."

"Any idea who would?" James asked.

"No. It's... almost unthinkable. Especially Marking the house - claiming it was done under his orders with no such orders given. I... I can't think of anyone who can cast the Mark who would dare. I wouldn't dare." He fell silent again.

Dumbledore finally nodded. "I'll alert the Ministry that there may be at least one rogue Death Eater on the loose."

He paused, seeming to take in the likely discussion he'd just interrupted - James Potter and Severus Snape, alone in a room without spells or objects flying.

"Have you told them?" The question was almost conversational.

"Not yet." Snape's voice was almost begging, even through the exhaustion that was more than apparent in the fact he was no longer bothering to raise his head.

"You should." He turned around and left.

"Severus?" James asked, an edge in his voice.

His head raised a little. "Lily, it's what we discussed earlier. Please."

She nodded, suddenly very grim. "I'll stay in earshot."

And then she left them alone.

Remus and Sirius both took seats on the cot behind James' chair so that they could all see Snape's face.

"What did he mean?" James was almost as serious as Sirius had ever heard him.

"James, I'm sorry." He was pleading with more strength than Sirius had thought he had left. "I didn't understand... didn't think... please..."

In all the tales of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black, it was always a very bad sign whenever anyone started begging for forgiveness or mercy without saying those actual words.

"...please..."


	15. Chapter 15

"Wait," James ordered.

Remus looked at him in surprise. Normally James would have been pressing every advantage he had, _especially_ with regards to Snape.

Then again, Snape's condition _was_ due to dark magic.

And nothing was ever going to be the same again, not now that Snape had been the one to get the warning out.

Sirius was also looking at James now, and Snape looked about as stunned as he was likely to manage - at least given what Remus knew from helping Sirius the time he'd gotten hit with the Cruciatus Curse.

"It's no use trying to tell us _anything_ if you're too exhausted to make sense," James told him.

Sirius broke off part of a chocolate bar that was sitting on its unwrapped wrapper on a table between the cots. "Here, have more chocolate."

Snape took it from him.

It didn't escape Remus that Snape didn't actively chew. _Even Sirius wasn't so bad he just waited for it to melt naturally..._

Sirius casually flipped up the edge of the wrapper. "Muggle dark chocolate. _Cheap_ Muggle dark chocolate."

"Field tested," Snape murmured. "Best I've tried... even if it tastes _horrid_."

Sirius raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Notes... in my office."

 _Snape's been Cruciated enough times to have_ field tested _varieties of chocolate? Methodically?_

* * *

Thirty minutes and the rest of the bar of chocolate later, Snape was holding his head up again and talking in complete sentences instead of phrases.

Sirius carefully folded the wrapper up and stuck it in the watch pocket of his robes.

"James, I'm sorry."

"What did you do?"

"I... Damn, I'll have to start at the beginning."

"Like either of us have any other place to be?" James replied sharply.

Remus felt his blood chill at the truth of the words.

Snape had been revealed as a spy. James had blown up a house in Voldemort's face.

At the moment, both were depending on the wards of Hogwarts to survive.

"It was before the last school year, during the early summer," Snape began after a moment of apparently quietly contemplating how to explain himself. "In fact, I think the spring term had just let out the previous week. I was applying for a job here, and so was Trelawney."

"Who has never foreseen anything, the fraud," Sirius laughed.

"Wrong."

Silence.

"She gave a prophecy. I overheard it, and since I was loyal to the Dark Lord then and trying to work my way to stability..."

"You told him." James said it so matter-of-factly that he might as well have been discussing the weather.

"Yes. It concerned a child born in late July. I thought he would wait to see what children were born then, rather than seeking out mothers-to-be. Or kept an eye out as the years went on for rising witches and wizards born then. The prophecy didn't specify location or nationality, only time of birth."

James gasped, seeming to understand, and Remus got it a moment later. "And you had no clue Lily was pregnant, because neither of you would talk to the other," he concluded out loud.

Snape nodded slightly. He looked at James. "I went to the Dark Lord and _begged_. He wouldn't change his plan, even when I was reduced to a sniveling mass on the ground, pleading for him to just wait until after the child was born and the birthdate known for certain." After a few seconds, he admitted quietly as an aside, "That was the first time I ever lost count."

The old jeering nickname turned sour in Remus' mind, and he could tell it had just done the same for James and Sirius from the looks in their eyes. Remus was glad Lily wasn't in the room to judge them for it, and he began to understand why Severus had requested Lily's absence from the room before he spoke.

That, and from the way he'd phrased the request, she already knew.

"If the Dark Lord had agreed to that, it would have given another two to three months before he could have moved on any family. Time for me to listen and look and act. Instead, I had to beg Dumbledore for help less than three days later. If I hadn't been able to retain my wand, I'd have looked like this or worse that night. As it was, I was physically intact but..."

"In your head you were still in front of someone else," Sirius filled in.

"Exactly. And I was still mentally prepared to face the Dark Lord, someone from who I could only request one life, and not Dumbledore, who took a rather poor opinion of me asking the same of him." A pause. "Dumbledore is scary when he's angry. He didn't even realize I failed to finish a sentence at one point. I was trying to explain that I'd tried for the delay, but instead, well... I think he still thinks I admitted to trying to trade Harry's life for Lily's –- something I would never do, and that would not have worked had anyone tried it."

"Oh?" Sirius said.

"You cannot dissuade the Dark Lord from his chosen prey. You cannot even attempt it without risking near-certain death -- instant or lingering. You may, at great personal risk, plead for bystanders -- with no guarantee for your well-being or theirs. You could not trade the world for a person the Dark Lord wishes dead, even if the world were yours to offer. Trade his chosen prey for a bystander? It would never even be considered."

James sought confirmation. "So you asked for Lily's life, and hoped to have time to manage more."

"Exactly."

"And why Dumbledore got us under cover so fast. He didn't know how quickly an attack might come."

"Yes."

"And all this is because you overheard a prophecy that mentioned a Dark Lord and went to go tell it to the current Dark Lord. As one of his then-current followers."

Snape closed his eyes, pressed his lips together, and nodded sharply once.

"And that was when you started spying for the Order?"

Another nod.

"What was the _exact_ wording of the prophecy?" Sirius demanded.

Snape cleared his throat slightly. "'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches -- born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies -- and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not.'"

"That's the entire prophecy?" Remus asked. _It sounds like something out of one of Binns' lectures._

"No. That's all I heard before Aberforth caught me at the door. That's all the Dark Lord has heard. Anything else, only Dumbledore knows -- and the Hall of Prophecies, of course. Trelawney doesn't remember having given it." Snape fell silent again, waiting for their reaction.

"Sirius, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I think so, James."

"That this sounds like the setup to a classical Hoisted By His Own Petard story from fifth year History class?"

Snape, Sirius, and James all looked at Remus.

"So I listened to the old ghost. _Someone_ had to take notes."

"What do you mean?" Snape asked.

They all stared at him.

James shook his head. "Right, forgot your background for a moment. How much of Wizarding legends did you hear as a kid?"

"Not much. Mother wanted to forget, once her family disowned her."

"There's a tradition going back millennia of dark wizards being brought down by self-fulfilling prophecies. Trelawney's prophecy sounds like one of them," Remus explained. "It has all the major features."

"Meaning?"

James' voice was firm. "Meaning that sooner or later, the Order would have had to leak the prophecy ourselves. ' _The_ one who can' not 'a one who can'. Unless he triggers it, we might be waiting for him to die of old age."

"Dumbledore doesn't believe in Divination," Sirius argued. "He'd _never_ let the Order leak it - what would be the point to him, other than to put people in harm's way?"

"And even if he did believe in Divination this one time," Remus concluded, "he'd have never let the leak happen without everyone it might apply to already being behind reinforced wards. Every witch I know of who's defied him three times or more and is anywhere near an age to have children is too important to the war effort to risk lightly."

Snape was shaking his head.

"Severus, this gives the advantage to our side. And thanks to what you did by leaving, Lily and Harry are both out of his reach and all of us are behind Hogwarts' wards now."

"Except that there are sympathizers on the Board of Governors," Sirius reminded him. "Snape's a professor, but how are you going to justify your family staying here once word gets out?"

Silence.

"It will require Lily's consent, but I have an idea."

"What is it?"

"James, if I tried to lean over a cauldron right now, I'd fall in. Lily was the second-best in our year. She's successfully completed every single lab project my students will be working on in the next month."

James' jaw dropped slightly. "If she's a substitute professor, that gives us temporary housing privileges."

"And time to plan for something more permanent."

"We could always try the Fidelius Charm again," Sirius offered. "I'd be glad to..."

"... end up like I am now?" Snape finished. "The only reason the Dark Lord wasn't targeting you or Lupin or even Pettigrew that entire first year was that he was convinced I was the Secret Keeper or at least knew who the Secret Keeper was."

"And that means I'd end up facing the same because?"

"Because, you dense lout, he knows the Potter family is choosing their own Secret Keepers -- and that you were first pick until the deception gambit was thought up. If it looks for one moment like they are using the Fidelius Charm again, you'll be on the wrong end of his wand the first moment he can find you. I doubt your wards would be _that_ good even if they drew power directly from your ego, Black. Here, they can live in the open. The Dark Lord does not need to search for people whose locations are already public knowledge. If we get Lily and Dumbledore to accept her as my temporary substitute and get a quiet note about it in the _Daily Prophet_ , they and you are safe."

"We can ask her in the morning," James remarked with a yawn. "Sirius, Remus, you mind?"

They both got up to leave. _James wants to discuss debts in private,_ Remus figured.

As he walked through the door, he heard James say, "You still owe us for what you did, even if it has all turned out for the best."

"Of course."


	16. The Offer

Severus lay still, waiting for whatever James might say next.

It was only a matter of time before the Potters called in his debt, and as a Slytherin he would prefer that to be hanging over his head for as little time as possible.

Not that he could say that. It wasn't his choice.

After what he'd done, he didn't deserve the choice.

And the pureblood known as James Potter certainly wasn't going to give it to him. He'd been very lucky to get that apology. James had expected another pureblood - only a few of the Dark Lord's followers high enough to be worth having as a spy weren't pureblod by at least the 'all wizarding grandparents' standard.

As far as Severus knew, he was the only true halfblood bearing a Dark Mark. The others had parents who'd been at the very least Muggleborn, not Muggle.

(But then, none of them had his skill with potions, and taking the Mark was as much as test of loyalty as it was a sign of the same.)

The Potters might have gotten themselves the label of 'blood traitors' long ago, and James had married a Muggleborn, but that didn't mean James would deal with him as he would an equal.

 _Just look at all the times he wouldn't take Lily's no for a no,_ he told himself. _Even_ years _after she really did fancy him._

He knew when the smell of _Amortentia_ changed for her, and it had not been in their seventh year, not by a long shot.

Footsteps.

He looked up just in time to see Lily charge through the door, a pillow twisted in her hands and green fire in her eyes.

He closed his eyes. Whatever she meant to do, he surely deserved.

"How... how could... urgh!"

"Lily..." James warned.

The bed shook under him as she hit the mattress beside him with it multiple times, and all he could do was clung to the sheets.

"I didn't know," he finally begged when she'd gotten that out of her system. "I didn't know it meant anything. I didn't know this was going to happen. I didn't understand when I joined. I didn't understand _anything_..."

Silence, and then he felt her sit down where she'd brought the pillow down.

"What didn't you understand?"

"The rumors about him, the rumors about what happens to people who leave, the rumors..."

"...about what happens to people who stay?" James finished for him much more quickly than Severus could manage himself yet. "Those are true?" He was leaning foward now, a great deal closer than Severus would have liked.

"No, they are false," Severus admitted, not bothering to restrain his weeping. "False. They do not go far enough. Not nearly far enough."

"Snape?" James asked.

He closed his eyes, not wanting to see their reactions. "This isn't the first time I've been cruciated so many times, merely the first without the counters soon afterward," he stammered. "There's a chance I may not have even been found out, that this was just a test of loyalty I failed."

Someone put a hand on his back.

"We'd be dead if you hadn't left when you did," James told him.

"And I would have surely followed soon after. My grief would have given my loyalties away more surely than veritaserum."

"You could have run," James reasoned.

"No one has ever lasted more than six months after the Dark Lord discovered their perfidy. I wouldn't have lived to see Easter. Perhaps not even Christmas."

"You could have stayed here," James retorted softly. "Safe behind the wards..."

"...useless to the battle against the Dark Lord..."

"Sev..." Lily begged.

"And you're assuming something even then, Potter." He used the last name, complete with all the old vitriol, to drive the point home.

"And what am I assuming?"

"You're assuming I would have let myself survive your wife for long after my part in this."

It took a long time and a lot of soft words from both of them to get Lily to calm down again after that.

And that moment was the one when Albus apparently, in his infinitely innappropriate wisdom, decided to stick his head in the door.

"We need to move Severus. Now."

"Why?" Lily asked.

Severus felt the hand lift off his back as James stood, but there was no time for him to process what that meant. "You can't be serious, Albus. He's not even fit to sit up unaided yet."

"We're about to hit Poppy's reporting deadline, aren't we?" Severus asked.

"Precisely."

"Reporting deadline?" Lily sounded confused.

"Any case of an injury requiring someone to remain in the Hospital Wing for over two days has to be reported," Severus explained. "It's wizarding law designed to keep the Headmaster from covering up disasters on the grounds."

"Why is this a problem?" James asked. "He already knows you survived. He knows he hit you with the Cruciatus Curse."

"There is a lifetime maximum, James, after which the healers of St. Mungo's do not bother with mind scans before consigning someone to the Addlement Wards on a permanent basis."

Lily clutched Severus' shoulder at Dumbledore's words.

"And unless I am very much mistaken, Severus is already far beyond that limit."

"What?" James sounded stunned.

Severus opened his eyes.

James looked stunned, too.

"The Dark Lord likes to hear the scream produced when the curse is applied. The legal guidelines presume curses held for many minutes at a time in quick sucession, not repeated curses of very short interval with a few seconds of recovery between."

"We have a few hours left before Poppy must make the report, but..."

"...moving me is going to take some work."

Dumbledore nodded. "Best to begin now. I've asked the castle to make rooms available for all of you -- it won't be safe for you to return to your old quarters, Severus, too many in Slytherin House know where they are -- and there's been a bit of a misunderstanding."

"What misunderstanding?" James demanded.

"It keeps insisting your living spaces be conjoined, with a common room of sorts and a single exit into the castle halls."

Severus looked at James, and after a few seconds James met his gaze.

"As the Muggles say," Severus started.

"Any port in a storm," James finished.

Severus was mildly surprised, having expected James to pick 'beggars can't be choosers', but at least the sentiment was there.

And it wasn't his place to complain about it, anyway.

"Good. Very good." His eyes were twinkling, and Severus had to wonder for a moment if the old wizard hadn't wanted the quarters connected to begin with. "And I believe you will be wanting this, Severus," Dumbledore said as he extended something Severus had thought he'd never see again not long ago towards him.

"I thought you said he lost his wand," Lily said accusingly.

"The one I was using that night," Severus told her. "Not daft enough to let the Dark Lord near a wand I used in Albus' service, nor to keep a wand I used for anything slightly dark on me at school. I bought a new one as a gift to myself after my NEWTs came in and started using the old one again when I started teaching." He took it from Albus, and even though he was in no shape to use it, just having a wand on hand again was a great comfort.

"On what grounds are you permitting us housing?" James asked. "The Board of Governors..."

"... have been quietly asking me to consider something for many years, at Horace's insistence. At the time, it was a practical impossibility. Given the current situation, I think it best I give in."

"Oh?" Severus asked. This was something he hadn't heard about.

"Potions is mandatory through OWL level, and a NEWT in the subject is required for many careers and advised for many others. This has understandably raised the class sizes and given the volatility of the subject..."

"Horace wanted it to be a two-professor department." _Damn, I_ knew _those classes were too big for that lab!_

"And I was quite lucky to find a single qualified replacement willing to teach when he retired, given how many other careers require top marks on a NEWT in the subject. At the time. Now..."

Severus smiled despite the continuing weakness and discomfort, not to mention the burning in his arm. _If he's going to offer what I think he's going to offer..._

"Ah! You are amenable to this, Severus?"

"If it's what I think you're offering, the senior Potions professor of Hogwarts school would like to state that he is indeed amenable."

"'Senior'...?" Lily asked. "You mean...? You're offering...?"

"There have been times in Hogwarts' history where a subject was taught by a team of professors with one taking the senior role. The class sizes for Potions have been increasing and are now at a level where multiple professors were historically considered justified. You would act as a substitute professor until end of term, and then class schedules would be adjusted over winter holiday. You would have the rights and priviledges of any Hogwarts professor, with a few minor adjustments due to your rank in your department, including room and board."

"I was going to ask that you be my substitute as a temporary measure until something else could be arranged," Severus told her quietly in the stillness that followed.

He wished he could see her face.

"It's been a while since I've been behind a cauldron, with Harry in the house..."

"Cover theory for a week or two, and I'll get you back behind a cauldron," he swore. "I was planning on covering theory after Halloween anyway, at least until the hidden sweets begin to disappear. The lab's dangerous enough when they aren't high on sugar. I made that mistake last year."

"James?"

"Lily, I already knew about the substitute request. If you want to teach, I'll make no argument against it."

"I'd love to accept, but can you two handle the constant contact that would happen, even if we got the housing location problem smoothed out?"

"We've had that discussion," James reported. "Is his statement that you two were like honorary siblings until the end of fifth year accurate?"

"Yes," she answered without hesitation.

"Then to put it quite bluntly I'd rather have him for an honorary brother-in-law than that thick lout of a Muggle your sister married for a real one."

"James, Vernon is not that bad."

"... Petunia's taste in men is that bad?"

"You've seen the anti-Muggle propaganda?"

Severus gave him an 'are you really that dense?' look.

"Petunia found one of _those_ and married him."

"James!"

"I thought that _was_ just propaganda."

Albus cleared his throat. When he had their attention, he remarked, "Well, I suppose that settles my worries about leaving you two unsupervised without needing significant repairs on the castle afterwards."

His eyes were still twinkling.

"Then I'll take the job," Lily said with an audible smile.

There was the tell-tale noise of Black and Lupin in the doorway, scuffling a bit as they both tried to get through at once.

"Then let's see about getting you all moved in, shall we?"

"One last thing, Albus," James requested. "We have established that you owe me a debt, have we not, Severus Tobias Snape?"

 _He used my full name. This is going to be bad._ He felt like the world had been cut out from under him. One minute he was going to have another potions professor to talk and brew with - and it being Lily just made that so much sweeter - and now this.

James was making his request, and it sounded like once again a pureblood was going to use wizarding custom to run roughshod over a halfblood.

Not that he had any right to complain. After what he had done, he was lucky to not be bound for Azkaban.

He was lucky he and they weren't dead by now.

"What is your desire, James Potter?" If James had a middle name, Severus was sure he'd never heard it.

"Your wand."

He barely had to think about it.

He could lecture without it, and Lily could handle the lab sessions for all the students. There were house elves here, no need for cleaning spells.

Anything capable of breaching the castle wards... well, he'd likely do just as good against that with a wand as he would staying back with the first years trying to keep them calm.

And he'd lost his right to complain over a year ago.

He shifted slightly onto his side, closed his eyes, and held his wand in both his hands, the handle exposed and extended outward, the tip pointed toward himself.

And waited.


	17. Purebloods

James Potter was, to put it in the mildest terms that could be even vaguely appropriate, absolutely gobsmacked.

 _Sweet Merlin, what the hell just happened?_

That phrasing always meant a request for a service or a mutual aid agreement, _never_ actually surrendering a wand.

He had never in his entire life seen someone use that phrasing to request a wand itself. There were very old tales of a few evil wizards doing so, of course, but those were from back when Quidditch still used live snidgets. Historical oddities of a rougher time, nothing more. Not something that had occurred in his lifetime.

But Remus was looking at him with disbelief and Sirius was regarding him as if he weren't quite sure James wasn't someone else under Polyjuice.

Lily was staring at him with wide eyes.

And Albus was giving him the absolute worst disapproval glare he had ever earned from the headmaster in his entire life.

Severus hadn't looked up, hadn't even opened his eyes, despite the fact he was now visibly shaking.

 _But... it hasn't meant... how..._

And then, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he knew.

The Potters had been labelled 'blood traitors' generations ago for treating those of 'less pure' blood as equals, even if James had been the first to marry without the guidance of _Nature's Nobility_. What the other pureblood families did in private happened outside their field of view.

And the old ways of mistreating those who were halfblood were no longer acceptable -- in public where the Ministry could see.

In private? Within the walls of Black Manor? _Within the meetings of the Death Eaters,_ James realized with a pang, _where blood status is everything._

"I... Severus..." he stammered.

 _Damn, can't get the words out._

Well, if he couldn't get the words out, he'd have to try something else.

James reached out with both hands and gently took the wand from Severus, making sure to not break the physical contact between the two.

Even so, the other wizard visibly drooped even further than he already had.

He carefully flipped the wand so the point was facing outward instead of inward, then pressed Severus' hands around it again.

Severus gasped, his eyes flying open to meet James' gaze.

"Your wand, to help defend my wife. Your wand, to help defend my child. Your wand, to fight beside me if we get a chance to have a go at the bastard what did this to you!"

Severus' eyes grew hard for a moment, but then he seemed to understand.

 _Yes, Severus, I actually am making the request I would have made if you were another pureblood._

Severus nodded. "For those things, you have my wand."

Poppy squeezed in behind Sirius, Harry on her hip and Jenny at her feet. "Now, can we get him moved _before_ we have to chose between his freedom and my healer certification!?"

* * *

Arthur Weasley walked through the Floo into the Hog's Head and was immediately met by Aberforth, who looked about as frazzled as Arthur had ever seen any member of the extended Dumbledore family ever get.

The pub was practically empty - anyone who had anywhere else to feast would have been there hours ago. The people who were left all looked drunk enough to have problems recognizing their own mothers at the moment.

"What happened? Half our world's trying to find out what happened, and the other half is wanting _The Daily Prophet_ to tell them what happened in the morning."

"Molly and I went to dinner at the Longbottoms' and..."

That didn't do anything to calm Aberforth down. "Tell me the kids weren't at home."

"No. Bill and Charlie aren't ready to tend to the little ones alone yet. They're all still at Muriel's, behind those wards of hers. All okay, I've checked within the hour."

Aberforth sighed, finally relaxing slightly. "Thank Merlin."

"Aberforth, what happened?"

No answer.

"What happened at my house?"

"You'd better have a seat, Arthur." He did so. "The correct question would be, What happened _to_ your house."

Arthur stared at him. " _To_ my house? What do you mean _TO_ my house?"

"Let's just say the Aurors have spent half the evening trying to figure out if anyone was home by studying ash patterns. No Dark Mark, but they're not taking chances assuming it was merely a Halloween 'trick', not after the rest of what's gone on this week."

Arthur started swearing.

By the time Aberforth had contacted the Ministry and come back with a bottle of Firewhiskey, he'd nearly run out of curses to rain down upon the Death Eaters' heads. "I swear, the next time me or mine get our hands on Bellatrix Lestrange..."

"So it was Crazy Bella, you think?"

"She, her husband, that brother of his, and one son of a Ministry official attacked the Longbottoms' tonight. They used the official's son as a way to try to get Frank and Alice to open the door without realizing what was going on -- they know him, and who would turn down an acquaintance on Halloween night?" He took the bottle of Firewhiskey and popped the cap off with a wave of his wand. "Bellatrix ran, the Lestrange brothers are dead, and when I left the son of the official was tied up and unconscious on Frank Longbottom's front lawn."

Aberforth leaned forward. "Which official?"

"Let's just say Barty is about to have the worst week of his life."

The next thing he knew, Aberforth was dragging him and his untouched Firewhiskey back toward the Floo. "Albus has to hear this, I told him I thought there was something that went wrong with that boy just after he took his NEWTs, I told him..."

* * *

Lucius Malfoy stared into the fireplace at Malfoy Manor.

He barely noticed Narcissa beside him, rocking little Draco against her in her own distress.

His attention was, however, on the burning in his arm. It wasn't a call to join his master or he would have left hours ago when it began.

No, this was rage and pain and a clear warning that getting close to the Dark Lord without good reason right now would be a fast way to an early end.

The fire flared and Bellatrix charged through, alone, wide-eyed, and clearly rather distraught.

"What happened, Bella?" Narcissa asked. Lucius barely noticed as she handed him Draco.

 _What kind of world have we landed you in, my son?_

"Roddy's dead." They all kept silent as she composed herself, although Narcissa did put a hand on her sister's shoulder. "Rab too. That damn fool Barty didn't check how many were home. We were out-numbered before the battle even started. He'd better be glad the Auror's are getting him -- he cast our master's Mark over the house just before he was Stunned." She pushed her hair back out of her battle-grubby face. "If I'd had a chance to get him without losing my chance to Apparate, I'd've left just enough of him for the Dark Lord to get his own satisfaction later."

A bad evening, turned into a worse night.

With Snape -- damn him, the filthy halfblood -- run off, Barty'd been the next-best potioneer the Dark Lord had, if nearly as inexperienced. It had taken his entire time at Hogwarts to court him into even considering taking the Mark, hours of time that could have been used recruiting others, many others, and all because no amount of simple skill could substitute for a true potioneer's instinct and intuition in the ruthlessly complex work the Dark Lord needed done.

It was, of course, no shame that the Dark Lord was not a true potioneer. Even if Salazar Slytherin had been the first Potions Master of Hogwarts, it was a documented fact no one in the family for four generations after him had the skill. It came and it went, on down the bloodline, and that special touch had skipped the Dark Lord's generation.

(It was also, of course, not something one mentioned often, offhand, or loudly.)

With those with 'merely' a highly marked NEWT in such high demand at the moment, a true potioneer's favor was practically worth his own weight in basilisk venom. Given that the Dark Lord had already been reduced to offering a position to a mudblood potioneer once, it was highly unlikely a replacement of reasonably worthy blood would be coming along any time soon.

It had taken years of effort on Lucius' part to seduce Snape to the cause, after all, and that was with a decade's warning than his predecessor was dying of chronic poisoning from careless ingredient handling and the knowledge that his mother's bloodline tended to be potioneers even more strongly than Salazar's own bloodline did.

This was a complete and total nightmare. Rodolphus and Rabastan's deaths were just the most recent part of the calamity.

"Burned the house of the Weasleys' to the ground. No one was home, and _I_ would never leave the Mark without the Dark Lord's order, but it should send a message."

Bellatrix sat in a nearby armchair and Narcissa perched beside her sister.

"What news of the Dark Lord, Bella?" Lucius finally found voice to ask.

"The permanent physical damage is minimal. His magic is whole and unweakened, as is his mind. He may well be fit to order retaliation before the Muggles celebrate Bonfire Night."

"May it be so," he choked out around the lump in his throat.

"That rodent is being held until the Dark Lord can take his pleasure in discovering whether he had any role in what transpired tonight. Beyond that, I have no more news whether fair or foul."

The uncharacteristic agitation said otherwise, but Lucius didn't have the heart to call his sister-in-law on it.

She'd been putting off having children until she could bear them in the golden age after the Dark Lord's final victory.

Now her husband's bloodline was lost and that victory seemed a far-off event, the stuff of dreams for one's children instead of one's self.

Draco pulled at Lucius' shirt and tilted his head, as if wondering what could ever distress his untouchable father so. "Da?"

"Shh, my son. Shh."


	18. Moving Day

"You honestly _didn't_ know relations between the aristocratic purebloods and nearly everyone else are _that_ bad?" Sirius asked James with total disbelief as they walked down the wide hallway, bag straps over their shoulders again. "Seriously?"

James gave a grumble of admission.

"I thought you knew. You were careful enough when you charged in and declared you owed him!"

"I didn't know! I thought the old ways of acknowledging debts were still active, not the ones for forcing debts to be paid."

"Damn it, James, I ran away from home because I couldn't stand being around that anymore. Your parents took me in knowing that was why I ran, not just the family obsession with the Dark Arts. How in Bessie's name did you miss that completely?"

"I don't know!"

"I could hazard a guess," Severus ventured from the floating stretcher in front of them Remus and Poppy were steering with their wands. "Black thought you'd have already seen it or been taught such things were by your parents. Your parents thought being best mates with the renegade heir of the Most Noble House Of Black would have given you all the education you needed in how the most prideful pureblood families still operate."

"That... could well be it," James admitted.

Sirius grumbled his agreement. "I certainly never though I'd need to share my mother's 'The Way Things Ought To Be' speech with a fellow pureblood."

Lily and Albus, with Harry and Jennyanydots, were leading the way. Albus seemed to be taking great delight in pointing out odd details of the castle.

 _He's trying to distract her,_ Sirius realized. _If she's busy looking at the castle, she's not worrying about Molly's brood._

 _Or what other news could come tonight._

Retaliation was a certainty. The question was when and and where it would occur, and who would be targeted.

 _Wait a minute._ "Snape?"

"What is it, Black?"

"What about whatever's in your house? Wherever you live during the summers? Shouldn't someone be there getting your belongings out?"

A long silence.

"No, Black. They've all known I at best fled in the moment more than a day before the Dark Lord's unfortunate incident with the Floo system." The smirk was audible. "Besides, I left nothing there but a cheap cot, a table, a chair, a stash of chocolate and pain potions, and a Muggle floor lamp at the end of the summer, and I already moved most of the things I value to Hogwarts when I was hired."

"Just in case you got caught?" James asked.

"No," Sirius realized. "Because no Death Eater would spend more time than necessary in an all-Muggle area. Reducing the belongings there to camping indoors would be cover."

"Good auror," Snape told him in a voice that made it clear that was not the entire story and that made him feel like he was being a disobedient puppy.

 _Why does everyone seem to do that? He doesn't even know I'm an animagus!_

"It was a good house," Lily called back.

 _A milltown rowhouse, 'a good house'?_ Sirius had to hold in the laugh of derision that was trying to come out. _A building that small and closed in? And the Muggles never build those places strong enough for much magical expansion._

"It was a great house." And with that, something in Snape's demenor just seemed to shut down.

* * *

The door to the collective new quarters was located inside of one of the lesser known secret passages between the second floor and the dungeons.

There were a few still life paintings on the walls, a pair of landscapes of what looked like it might have been the greater London area in the days before the Magna Carta, and a rather striking portrait of a wizard reading an old book.

A wizard who, James already knew well, would merely look up and glare at anyone who tried to disturb him.

He hadn't been there every time the Marauders had used this shortcut, but they'd never figured out where he went when he wasn't in that frame.

Now, Mr. Grumpy was stationed directly across from his front door.

 _Well, at least that means anyone making noise trying to break in is likely to disturb him enough to notify Albus,_ James thought.

"Evening, Mr. Grumpy," Sirius joked.

"Hmph." He turned the page.

They all filed in after Albus opened the door.

There was a common sitting room, completely empty with three doors leading from it. The one on the back wall clearly led to a very small water closet -- James assumed that was so any visitors wouldn't have to trudge through the castle or be granted access to their individual living quarters.

That left the identical doors facing each other on the left and right walls.

"I believe the castle intends Severus to take the right side and the Potters to take the left," Albus told them quietly. "Severus, I can have the house elves move you, or..."

"I'd rather do it on my own, Headmaster."

"Don't you dare overdo it," Poppy warned.

"It can wait, so long as I have a place to sleep until then."

Lily quickly offered the use of a sofa. "And it's probably best we provide the furniture for the common room anyway," she remarked, "since our things are already here."

James noted to himself that she didn't compare house sizes, but said nothing. They had more furniture than a simple Muggle rowhouse could possibly hold.

"Sirius," Lily asked, "would you mind getting out the sofa from the sitting room, please? The three seater?"

"That your mother gave you as a wedding present in that _lovely_ color that matched the color of mountain trolls?" Sirius asked sweetly.

"It can't be that bad," Severus commented as Sirius was unzipping the required bag.

"It is too that bad," James shot back.

Sirius Summoned it from the bag and quickly enlarged it to normal size again.

Severus propped himself up just enough to see over the edge of the stretcher. "Sweet Merlin. Lily, I thought she wasn't colorblind."

She sighed and looked up at the ceiling. "No, she was just convinced the seventies never ended."

They helped get Severus settled on the sofa, and then Albus left after giving them the password with Poppy demanding Severus rest properly as she followed in his wake.

Harry sat down on the floor, looking around the room with wide eyes.

Jennyanydots was patrolling the corners of the room, sniffing the floorboard every few inches.

"Well, I guess we start unpacking now," Lily announced.

James and Sirius groaned.

Remus laughed behind a hand before taking a bag from the floor at James' feet. "Just go pick out a room for the nursery, Lily, and I'll help you get Harry settled."

* * *

Albus was nearly to the gargoyle guarding the Head's Office and Quarters when a goat partonus charged down the hallway.

"Albus, your office, now," his brother's voice demanded.

It was rare anything led Aberforth to come to Hogwarts himself. He allowed the use of his Floo to the Order as a back way into Hogwarts, but he only came through once or twice a year.

He felt off-balance for the first time in years. So much had happened, and there were so many things he should have seen years ago.

He had known Avery and Mulciber Seniors had at least been important to Riddle at some point in the past -- otherwise they never would have been chosen to wait in Hogsmeade the night he tried to gain a professorship -- but he hadn't deduced from Severus' information that there was a recognizable inner core within the Death Eaters now.

 _I'll give him a few days to recover, and then I'll get him to tell me everything, even things that seemed at the time like nothing to him,_ Albus swore to himself as he walked up the stairs to his office. _It'll help him feel like he's still valuable to the Order._

He wondered darkly how long it would take the young Potions Master to realize the Order had only ever had the one spy, that all the other information they had was from defectors to the Ministry who had died in security failures after giving their reports, and that gaining another spy was unlikely.

He rounded the last turn of the stairwell and stopped in his tracks.

Aberforth and Arthur Weasley were sitting in the guest chairs.

"Arthur, what happened?"

"The Lestrange brothers are dead. Molly and I were at the Longbottoms', the kids were at Muriel's, we're all fine. The Longbottoms were attacked by four Death Eaters. Bellatrix barely got away."

"Who was the fourth?"

"Albus, you need to sit down."

"Aberforth..." he warned.

"Brother, you need to sit down," Aberforth repeated. "I think we may have just discovered our leak at the Ministry."

He rounded the desk and sat in his high-backed chair. "Who?"

"Bartemius Junior. I _told_ you there was something wrong with that boy."

"You're sure?" he asked Arthur.

"He was the one who knocked on the door. He fought the same as the rest of them. After we Stunned him, I saw a tattoo on his arm where you told the Order the Death Eaters are all Marked. We didn't risk examining the Lestranges' bodies, so I don't know if they had matching tattoos."

"Would you know it if you saw it again?"

"I believe so, Albus, but where would I..."

Aberforth chuckled. "That can be arranged."

"We... lost our main spy," Albus admitted, not willing to let it out that there was no other spy.

Arthur sat back, mouth slightly open. "Was that why we were attacked?"

"More likely it's related to the attack on the Potter home earlier in the evening," Albus speculated.

Arthur looked like he'd just been punched in the gut. "Lily? James?"

"The Potter family is unharmed." Albus sighed and stood up. "Follow me, both of you. I think it's high time we all compared notes."


	19. Settling In

Lily sat down in the rocking chair and sighed.

Sirius flashed her a grin. "Well, that's done."

Harry didn't say anything. Lily had set him down the moment Sirius had gotten the room prepared to her liking and he'd fallen asleep before she'd gotten the blanket spread over him.

Remus had left to get the washroom set up. Sirius had never realized just how much it took to prepare living quarters to be occupied -- he'd always lived in and moved into homes that had already been continously occupied for years.

Lily nodded. "The rest of us could sleep on the floor if we needed to, but Harry..."

"Harry needs things to be as normal as possible."

"And you and James don't?" he asked her. "Merlin, Lily, this is the second time in two years you two have needed to move with under a day of warning! And while I don't mind at all keeping up Potter Manor, and I know Remus doesn't either, what with the anti-werewolf legislation being pushed through to try to contain Greyback keeping him from working, I'd like nothing better than you two being able to go home."

"We lived at Godric's Hollow longer." Her voice was flat. That disturbed him.

"And now this is home, for a time. If you and James are too emotionally exhausted to deal with unpacking the rest of the house, at least let me get your bedroom set up tonight. Don't spend the first night on the floor."

She smiled weakly. "And I suppose the fact we've already established Severus is not going to be on the floor figures into this?"

 _Damn, she knows me too well now._ "Partly," he admitted. "More importantly: It's about to be November. In Scotland. In case you haven't noticed, you're practically in the dungeons right now. Convenient for the classroom and lab access, not so much for the trouble involved in keeping warm. The castle hasn't cooled down for the night yet and as far as I've seen, the common sitting room is the only room here that has a fireplace."

"For security," Lily guessed. "Even if Albus is the only one connected."

Sirius blinked.

"He told me that on the way down. Hogwarts has its own Floo Network. The Head's Office and the fireplace of the current deputy are the only ones that can be connected to the outside, and only with the Headmaster's direct involvement."

"Meaning You-Know-Who would have to get into the castle to begin with before he could get here."

She nodded. "And there's a portrait right outside the front door to spread a warning if he passed through that corridor."

"Lily, don't count on Mr. Grumpy. He's not there all the time."

"Nearly all the time, anyway. And he's only grumpy to you because of the way you treat him. He's always been a perfect gentleman to me."

"Really?" he barked in disbelief.

"Really. And I started using the passage as a shortcut back to the Tower after Potions in first year."

"So there's a chance the castle put you all down here because a grouchy portrait _likes you_?"

* * *

James dug around in one of the remaining bags, Summoned a floor lamp, enlarged it, and set it beside the sofa before using his wand to light it. "Feeling any better?" he asked.

"Now it's more like immediatley after when I've had the counters in time." Severus didn't open his eyes, and James took that as a sign of both exhaustion and trust.

 _When we were students, he would have never kept his eyes closed around me, even if he were practically passing out from pain._

That had happened at least once that James knew of - after a lab accident fifth year.

"But Lily's still going to need to substitute for you."

"Yes. At least she'll have the weekend to prepare."

"For how long?"

"I don't know," Severus admitted after a moment. "Not past the holidays, I would think. I don't know how many times I was cursed. I've never been entirely without immediate care before -- the Dark Lord prefers to keep his Death Eaters fit to serve him."

There were so many levels of meaning in that statement that James knew he'd be sitting up late thinking through it and cringing at what Severus had just revealed some night in the long dark between terms.

"Well, if you need more chocolate, just tell one of us."

Severus gave a short nod.

"Do you think I should put some of the bookcases out here?" he asked.

"I've got some of my own," Severus remarked.

"Well, of course. But with you and Lily _both_ teaching in the same discipline, it would make sense to have at least some books where you two aren't constantly having to ask each other to borrow something."

"Same thing with us."

"Oh?" James grabbed another lamp and put it on the other side of the room beside the outer door.

Severus finally opened his eyes again. "You are a defense specialist who never let himself come in contact with materials on the Dark Arts written by those seeking to teach them."

"So?"

"You don't have inside perspective, and you've never allowed yourself to learn from anyone who did. As a matter of personal pride, as I recall."

"Quite right."

"We've have different understandings of the Dark Arts. As proven by our Sortings, we have different defensive outlooks as well."

"So?"

"We work together and take advantage of that, and of the fact of our mutual history."

"Our mutual history, meaning what?"

"It means I know your weak points and blind spots and you know mine, Gryffindor." Severus smirked.

As a clear sign of just how much the world had changed in the past few hours, James recognized that he'd always had two kinds of smirk: the dangerous one he'd seen directed towards him so often as a student and this one, which was more playful somehow.

"Oh?" James asked with a wry smile of his own. "So you admit you have weak points, _Slytherin_?"

The smirk deepened. "Only a fool doesn't."

"Have weak points, or admit them?"

"Either the fool has no strength and thus no weak point, or he fails to see where he is vulnerable and makes himself even more open to attack." The smirk fled. "The Dark Lord admits no weakness in himself, only weaknesses in those he uses to carry out his wishes."

"Which is why you're at risk from St. Mungo's," James deduced.

There was no response.

* * *

"Albus!"

Arthur turned to see Minerva McGonagall charging down a staircase as they finally made it to the second floor.

"Tell me it isn't true... Oh _Arthur_!" She stopped when she got to them, taking heaving breaths. "Oh, at least you're safe..."

"We are all fine," he assured her. "We weren't there."

Her eyes suddenly looked very moist. "Oh thank heavens. Albus, I received an owl from Bathilda..."

"James and Lily -- and Harry -- are fine," Dumbledore assured her.

"But the house..."

"I believe that is James' story to tell," Albus told her quietly.

Her eyes glinted. "What did he do?"

Aberforth sighed, and Arthur realized he didn't actually know where the younger Dumbledore brother had been Sorted. It was a familiar sigh, the sort members of the other houses tended to use wherever and whenever Gryffindors had been sharing stories of daring and courage for what they felt was too long.

"They are here in the castle, Minerva. We were just headed there ourselves," Albus told her as he began to lead the way again.

"How is Severus doing?" he heard her whisper to the Headmaster. "And you still haven't told us what happened to him."

"He is out of the Hospital Wing, but he won't be fit to teach for some time yet."

"The Slytherin students are beginning to wonder. I don't know how much longer Quirinus will be able to keep them from demanding answers -- or sneaking out to find answers themselves."

They were in the passageway now -- Arthur vaguely remembered using it a few times to avoid being found out of bed at night his seventh year -- and soon a portrait was asking Albus, "Back so soon?"

"The demands of the times," Albus answered. He placed his palm on the facing wall and whispered something Arthur couldn't hear.

A door appeared and Albus knocked once.

"Yes?" James' voice called out.

The headmaster opened the door.


	20. Settling In 2

James leaned back against the foot of the sofa.

"You could have just found a chair instead of taking the floor," Severus noted dryly from just behind him.

"After moving that many bookcases?" James pointed at the wall with the door to the passageway, which was now covered in bookcases of various heights from corner to corner with only a gap for the door left.

There was a weak chuckle in answer. "Mine will probably cover most of the rest of the walls. Mum left quite a library behind."

"She died?" James asked. He hadn't heard anything, but given her background and the rise of Voldemort's followers' influence he wouldn't have been surprised if she'd only been deemed worthy of a single sentence in the _Daily Prophet_ 's obituary list.

If that.

"She fled." The words dripped with guilt.

"Severus?"

"She could no longer deny what I had become and fled."

"I'm..."

"My own damn fault," Severus insisted.

"I wasn't going to mean it _that_ way." He snorted bitterly. "It's not like Harry's got _any_ grandparents left."

"I... hadn't heard that."

"I'm not surprised. My parents died in that dragonpox outbreak just before Harry was born. Most people..."

"... just stopped reading the obituaries that spring," Severus finished.

James nodded.

"And the Evanses?"

There was something choked back in Severus' voice. _He knew them,_ James reminded himself. _They probably even fed him..._

"Gas leak in the night, not long after we got engaged. Petunia was already married, Lily was in the guest rooms of Potter Manor so we could formally announce..." He took a deep breath and shook his head. "They went to bed that night and never woke up."

"Damn," Severus breathed. James thought he sounded on the verge of tears, but neither looked nor commented on it.

"Their faces were peaceful," James told him after a moment. "They never knew."

A ragged breath. "Better than we can hope for, if he ever finds us," Severus reminded him darkly.

"And if Hogwarts is attacked, we'll all have larger problems than whether or not we will be granted peaceful ends," James shot back.

There was no answer.

Someone knocked at the door.

"Yes?" James called out, glad of the rescue from the increasingly uncomfortable conversation. There were few who could even see that door, and he trusted them all with his life.

And, so far as he knew, all of them but Poppy and Albus were already inside.

The door opened to reveal Albus.

And Aberforth.

And Arthur, who James had not seen in weeks.

And McGonagall, who he had barely seen at all since he had left Hogwarts.

He was on his feet a moment later and rushing towards them all. "Professor!"

McGonagall accepted a hug from him. "Oh, I'm glad to see you again as well, young man. Although with you living in the castle now, you ought to call me Minerva."

James felt himself blush slightly at his old Head Of House's words. He hadn't realized something as basic as that was going to change now, not on a conscious level.

"Thanks, Ab," Severus was saying softly behind him, the emotional after-effects of the conversation he and James had just been having clearly set aside.

"I'm just glad you knew better than to have the bus drop you off at the front gate instead of at the Hog's Head, Severus," the younger Dumbledore brother responded gruffly. "You'd have never made it to the castle, not in your state."

"Considering the depths of your expertise dealing with the inebriated and Stupified, I thought it a wise choice."

Aberforth chuckled, then grew serious again. "You're damn lucky you knew how to summon that bus without a wand."

"I know." James could almost hear the smirk form. "Thanks for teaching me."

McGonagall - _Minerva_ \- pulled back. "You two were alone in the same room and didn't hex each other?" There was slight shock in her voice - anyone who had known them both as students would have asked the same - but as James watched her eyes widened and hardened.

And now her wand was out.

Albus had a hand on her wrist a moment later, forcing her hand down. "Severus has been _our_ spy since before he became a member of the Hogwarts staff," he told her softly in a very even voice. "His timely warning is why the Potters left their home ahead of Voldemort's attack tonight."

Aberforth snorted. "He's why they knew to get into an undisclosed location in the first place!"

Arthur's jaw dropped. He looked quickly between James and Severus. "I wasn't in school with you, but half the wizarding world knows you two haven't exactly..."

"The Dark Lord threatened Lily," Severus explained wearily.

Minerva had not lowered her wand. "Are we sure neither of them has been replaced by way of polyjuice, Albus?"

"I'm the only one who has been completely alone in the past three hours," James told her.

"And I can vouch for him," Severus murmured through obvious pain. _Damn, how long has he been awake now? Six hours, seven, and in his state?_ "If Potter had been replaced by an impostor, I'd likely already be dead."

Minerva not only lowered her wand, but tucked it away in her robes.

"Severus, I hate to ask it of you," Aberforth began, "but we need Arthur to be able to confirm if he's seen a Dark Mark on someone tonight."

"What?" James asked, mouth hanging open.

"There was an attack on the Longbottoms," Arthur quietly confirmed. "And, apparently, on my home. Molly and I were with Frank and Alice and the kids were with Muriel. No one on our side got hurt. The Lestrange brothers are dead."

"Bellatrix?" Severus sounded oddly hopeful.

"No such luck. Molly almost got her. We did, however, gain a captive."

"Thus the need for confirmation," Severus responded. "Why didn't you look on the brothers?"

"I was too busy charging off to Aberforth, to let the Order know we were attacked. I didn't even know about my house until he told me."

Severus nodded. "Minerva, would you mind guarding that door? I'd prefer Lily didn't come walking in."

Once she had done so, Severus became very serious. "The Dark Mark is only granted to Death Eaters. Receiving one requires enduring a private magical ceremony with the Dark Lord alone. Don't ask me what it entails -- the recipient goes into a trance state early on in the proceedings and there are no witnesses. Those who are not loyal to him and to his cause do not survive. I've heard the screams and seen the bodies."

Arthur turned slightly green, but nodded. "I understand."

"You are sure you would recognize what you saw again?"

Arthur nodded. "Absolutely. I only saw it for a moment, but there's no forgetting the emblem."

"Then take a good look." It took a moment for Severus to pull up his sleeve.

James had seen photographs before, in the last few months of his now-useless training. No one had known the true significance, though, at least not in Magical Law Enforcement, and even Wizarding photographs allowed for emotional distance.

Seeing it in person branded into moving flesh was chilling, especially now that he knew what it meant.

Now that he knew he'd played a role in putting it there, however small.

"That's it."

Severus worked his sleeve back down until his arm was covered to the wrist.

"Then the Ministry was compromised," Arthur told them all. "I saw that on Barty Crouch's son tonight."

Albus' face turned almost as white as his hair.

"I swear, I heard no rumor, saw nothing..." Severus stammered.

The headmaster walked over to him. "I believe you, Severus. It appears you were not as trusted of late as we thought. Perhaps it is a good thing you fled, even if you had not already been found out."

And then the loud discussion about how in the world the son of the head of Magical Law Enforcement, the boy with twelve OWLs and practically the entire British wizarding world tracking his promising career nearly as much as they tracked Ludo Bagman's Quidditch statistics, had managed to side with Voldemort without anyone noticing.

Lily, Remus, and Sirius came in the room.

Five seconds later, Lily was the focus of everyone in the room. Questions about how frightened she was, how Harry was doing, how had she managed being in hiding started flying around the room... and then the second wave of shouts about Barty Crouch Jr. began.

James looked over his shoulder and asked Severus, "Do you need more chocolate?" during a moment when no one else was paying much attention to them anymore.

"Not yet. In a few hours. Have to space it out."

It didn't make all that much sense to James, but he hadn't taken care of anyone in the aftermath before and had been forced into hiding almost as soon as he'd finished training to be an Auror. And Severus was, admittedly, a thankfully unusual case. "You're the cruciation expert."

Severus smirked, with what looked like a minor touch of pride.

It took asking Sirius and Remus to please go help the Weasleys before they could get Arthur to leave, even after James had told the tale of the last moments in Godric's Hollow.

Minerva walked over to the sofa and put a hand on Severus' shoulder. "I'll see that the Slytherins know you're going to be all right."

"Word of that will get back through some of them to the Dark Lord," he told her with a smirk. " _That_ much I _want_ him to know."

She patted him on the shoulder. "I won't tell any of the students how hurt you are, though. You're in no position to duel a first-year right now."

James saw the other wizard nod slightly and with great reluctance.

The elderly witch turned to leave. Just before she stepped through the doorway, she turned back towards the sofa again. "Severus, I lost track of your mother when she eloped, but the girl I knew would have been proud of you."

She left, and everyone else kept their heads turned away until Severus regained his composure.

Which left James on the floor after reclaiming his seat, Lily clearly planning out where to put more chairs, Severus on the sofa, and the brothers Dumbledore standing on opposite sides of the doorway.

"Albus, I can't be a head of house anymore." The defeat in the words was almost palpable.

The headmaster nodded. "It would be unsafe for you to leave the grounds. We always knew the day might come when you would be found out, Severus."

"Then you already have in mind my replacement."

A nod.

"Oh, stop taunting the boy with crumbs, Al!" Aberforth bit out.

Albus sighed. "Quirinus."

Severus had himself shakily hauled up on his right elbow in less than five seconds. "They'll kill him! The Muggle Studies professor, Head of Slytherin with that many relatives of the Dark Lord's followers and admirers Sorted there? Bad enough to them that there's a Slytherin in the post, but to make him Head?"

"We are very short on Slytherins in the staffroom right now, Severus."

He lowered himself back down. "Which wasn't my doing."

"Of course it wasn't. But the fact remains, you cannot retain that role and there are very few in the school who could qualify. Aurora must be up in the Astronomy Tower at all hours and cannot therefore be available every night for the Slytherin students in case of emergencies. Septima has weekend obligations that cannot be set aside until after the end of this academic year. That leaves Quirinus."

Severus groaned. "And what support can he give the Slytherins who are courted but wish to remain independent?"

"Severus, _think_ ," Aberforth said quietly. "You can't keep the position. However, you do have to maintain regular office hours as a professor. I dearly hope House Slytherin has retained the capacity to fudge a need for remedial potions."

James had never heard where Aberforth Dumbledore had been Sorted. Everyone knew about Albus -- he had been Head of Gryffindor before Minerva for years.

Now, he thought he had a pretty good idea what the Sorting Hat had called out the September night the younger Dumbledore sibling had come to Hogwarts.

And he was also fairly sure he knew who Severus' contact in the Order had been whenever making his way to Hogwarts would have blown his cover.

 _Everyone knows those two are still mostly estranged. No one would expect Aberforth to pass information on anything but drunk underage students to Albus._

They finally managed to shoo the brothers out on a call of Severus needing rest without questions and Lily simply needing rest.

"Albus?" James asked as the headmaster paused in the door.

"What is it, James?"

"I want it back."

Albus nodded, and then the three were alone at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was already working on this when I found out that Rowling had announced Quirrell's house. For the potential comedic value, and because I tend not to listen to Word Of God canon, I'm leaving the story as planned.


	21. Quiet At Last

Severus closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. Finally, the questions were over.

He hurt all over. His Dark Mark was burning, and he knew the Dark Lord's fury would only grow as the news of what this evening had brought reached his ears.

Lily was talking to her husband. "Jenny's watching Harry. I set the two-seater up in our private sitting room. I don't think Remus and Sirius know about it."

 _Know what about it?_ Severus wished they'd at least be quiet. He hadn't been allowed to sleep since Lily'd managed to wake him up, between giving information and trying to keep Lily calm.

"I packed it myself. I don't think Sirius knows about it either."

Severus opened his eyes as Lily knelt beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Severus, there are a lot of people who know you're on this sofa right now, and within an hour several of them are going to be outside Hogwarts and talking. I know you've been awake for hours. I know you're hurting. I trust Mr. Grumpy and the charms and wards on our communal front door. But we _need_ to move you, just one more time. Just into the next room, and then you can stay there until you're up and about again. Can you handle that?"

He nodded. It made sense, and if he'd been fit to walk on his own, he would have already been on his way to find some quiet corner of his own new rooms for the night.

Even sleeping on the floor in an unannounced location would feel safer than being someplace the Dark Lord would all too soon hear he was. Even the thousand-year-old wards of Hogwarts, layered ever deeper through the generations, felt thin when compared to the burning in his forearm.

She squeezed his shoulder. "I'll get everything ready. I don't want us to need to disturb you for anything but tending to your needs once we move you."

It was good to have Lily around again. She thought about things like that.

"James, mind staying with him?"

"That's fine with me, Lily." He sat back down as his wife bustled off. "I'll wait on the books until we get your shelves up and see what volumes we've got. No use shelving duplicates."

"Unless it's because of personal notes," Severus weakly insisted, thinking of more than a few of his own old textbooks. "I presume you've set ownership charms on your collection?"

"With Sirius' eye on about a third of my Defense library?"

Severus chuckled. "And I have charms on mine because of the students. We could sort by topic instead of owner..." he hinted.

James nodded. "With you and Lily both teaching Potions, we'll almost have to for that subject, at least. I think I'd like to keep our Defense libraries separate, because of the differences in what we've acquired."

"Keep in mind a significant part of mine is on the Dark Arts themselves, Potter."

"Exactly. It's a different angle on the same subject."

"Hmm. That idea does have some merit."

James suddenly started laughing.

"What?" Severus asked, feeling very defensive.

"If anyone had ever told me ten years ago when we were on that train that I'd be discussing melding my personal library with yours, I'd have done my eleven-year-old best to hex him."

Severus couldn't hold in the smirk. "Ah, but I would have _succeeded_."

"I was a fool back then," James said under his breath.

"I seem to recall already verbally giving better than I got that day," Severus claimed in a slightly louder voice.

"But then why was it _you_ who left the train car with Lily? It's not exactly a good thing for a wizard to be able to claim his first contact with his wife was chasing her and the brother of her heart away on a call of House rivalry."

"Neither is it good for a man to get between his best friend and her house."

"We should have done what she asked and left you alone sooner."

"I recall hexing first more than a few times, Potter. Don't you dare claim I never got in the first spell."

"I never said I'd have stopped believing in self-defense. But what kind of imbecile goes looking for a fight less than three hours after his Defense OWL Practical?"

They were steadily getting louder.

"That slur was my own foolishness, Potter. I'll not have you taking the blame for it from me!"

Both men fell silent in dawning horror as the distinctive sound of a crying infant swiftly moving into toddlerhood split the evening air.

"Sweet Merlin, we woke the baby," James breathed with fear in his eyes.

After a moment the crying stilled.

Then came the footsteps.

And the door slamming open.

Lily had improved her nonverbal spellcasting a great deal since the last time Severus had been around her, because he honestly didn't realize what she'd done until James and he were already soaked to the bone from her _aguamenti_.

After a sputtering, shivering, drenched moment, the wizards' clothes, the sofa, and their bodies were dry again.

"Don't do that again," Lily warned with just enough bite in her voice that Severus knew she was serious.

He quickly classified his friend in the same Dangerous Witch Mother mental category Molly Weasley occupied.

"Before I was so woefully interrupted by my crying child, I think I got everything ready."

They each got under one of his arms, and between their relative heights and his weakness at the moment they half-carried half-stumbled him into the Potter family sitting room.

Severus took a deep breath in amazement.

They owned a Muggle hideaway sofa.

It was currently folded out, covered with what had to be one of their better sets of bedclothes, and had enough pillows strewn around its head that he should be able to prop up in the morning even if he was too weak to sit. "Lily..."

"As my wife already told you, now we won't need to move you unless you need us to," James reassured him. "If I know Albus, he'll give us the weekend to settle in and won't be too surprised you've been moved. Since Lily's going to be acting Potion's professor until you're fit to be in front of a class again, you've got a while to get fully back on your feet."

"James, you don't understand...."

"Yes, I do. _Your_ only responsibility right now is getting fit enough to teach, with no clear time limit other than 'end of current term'. You do not need to heal any faster to fulfill a duty for Albus or He-Who-I-Blew-Up-Tonight."

Severus barely held in a shuddering laugh.

"And if Albus tries, I think Aberforth will lead a rebellion in the Order." Lily helped him sit and then lift his legs under the sheets and duvet. "I never realized he was that sneaky."

"Believe it." Severus smiled. "Everyone underestimates him because he leads the simple life of a lowly barkeeper."

"And how is that underestimating him?" James asked as he magically scooted an armchair to the side of the bed.

Severus couldn't resist the smirk. "Brother of the most powerful light wizard around? Brother to _the_ transfiguration master of the past century? Brother to oh he who discovered the twelve uses of dragon's blood? Brother to a headmaster of Hogwarts with a significant post and sizable influence on the Wizengamot?"

"That'd be Aberforth, yes."

"And yet the _Daily Prophet_ leaves him alone, the Ministry turns a blind eye to questionable activities at his pub even during the few periods when they've wanted Albus gone, and he only barely needed Albus' help to get off of that charge regarding the goats? He wants a simple life, and he gets one, no matter how impossible it should be for someone of his family and connections to have one, estranged or not."

"He's a Slytherin?" Lily whispered, catching Severus' meaning.

"With goals a bit more suited to Hufflepuff. Ambition doesn't have to be a search for _power_. He believes in second chances, but Merlin help you if you try to ask him for a third chance." Severus tucked his wand under the pillow his head was on. "It means most people regard him as if he'd been a Hufflepuff and don't recognize his actual resources, magical or otherwise - which he never uses unless he has to. Compared to Albus, he is nothing. Compared to almost anyone else..." He shrugged a little. "No one actually knows."

"Unless someone attacks Hogsmeade," James flatly stated. "That would put his simple life at risk."

"And, as Kipling said, anyone doing that would 'get the return stroke in his eye'."

"Kipling?" James asked.

"You never introduced him to Kipling, Lily? Not even _The Jungle Book_? I would have thought a Gryffindor at least would know about Rikki-Tikki, especially given his house prejudices."

"What's Severus talking about?"

"Later, dear." She yawned. "I don't know when I last slept..."

"I'll stay with him. If that's acceptable to you, of course, Severus."

"When the entire Order knows if anything happens to me tonight, you did it?" Severus smirked. "Between that and the wards, I'll be fine."

 _It's going to be the safest I've slept since I heard the prophecy._ The realization, plus how unsafe he actually felt, made him tremble slightly despite not wanting to worry Lily. _How in danger have I been? Even when I wasn't on the ground before the Dark Lord?_

Lily turned to leave. "James, I'll take care of Harry tonight. You just worry about him."

Severus heard the door close.

His arm burned, his body ached, but the sheets he was on and under felt like they cost more than his research budget for the term. "James, you two didn't have to take out your best bedcovers for me."

James' eyebrow raised. "These aren't our best. Actually, these have been in storage since we moved, just in case we did need them for the hideaway."

"Ah." _Another rich pureblood thing. Must be nice to be the last remaining family in a moneyed bloodline._

James must have caught the reaction. "Severus, you are like her brother. If these were our best, and you were hurting this much, and our old issues had been set aside as they have been, we would use them for you. I'm not seeking another debt to hang over your head. You are _visibly_ in pain. You are tired. These are good sheets." He dimmed the lights with a wave of his wand. "Go to sleep."


	22. The First Of November

James was fairly sure he managed to doze off a few times during the night, leaning from his chair onto a few of Severus' many pillows.

He could tell that Severus never did. There were a few times he rested well enough for his body to relax for a time, but it never touched his face. There were a few times he was too drowsy to talk, but he never stopped responding entirely if James said something.

"He's not happy," Severus told him some time after midnight. "I doubt anyone with a Dark Mark will be sleeping tonight."

The guilt had struck James again then. The truth that the bullying he'd helped start and had kept alive might have been the difference between taking the Mark and not for Severus. The truth that he hadn't had a thought in his mind that damaging Voldemort without killing him could mean agony for anyone working for or allied to the Order.

So he kept offering chocolate, water, physical aid in shifting around to see if lying slightly differently on the mattress might help Severus ignore his arm and the lingering aches just enough to sleep just a little, and even a pillow fluffing soon after Severus' prediction that he would not sleep at all tonight.

"How did you get the hair out of your house, anyway?" Severus asked during one of the chocolate breaks.

James yawned. "I modified the spellwork the Jewish wizarding community uses to clean up for Passover to work on hair and dander instead of bread crumbs. It was very effective." He stretched for a moment. "And once I have a chance to test it a few more times, I'll let Albus know about it."

Severus had chuckled at that.

The only sign they had that the dawn had finally come was the pealing of the distant bell, barely audible in the companionable silence that had fallen over the room.

Lily walked in not long after, carrying a sleepy Harry in her arms. "Long night?" she asked.

"He didn't sleep," James reported quietly as he took Harry from her.

"Your husband didn't, either," Severus retorted, sounding as though he'd finally managed to fall half-asleep.

Lily sat on the edge of the mattress, reaching over to put a hand on Severus' shoulder. "At least we all made it through the night."

Neither wizard had anything to say to that, for it was all too true.

Harry was staring at Severus, and James couldn't decide whose eyelids were drooping the most. "It's okay," James whispered to his son. "He's just someone you haven't met before. There are a lot of people you haven't met before."

"They were in the same room for a little while yesterday," Lily told him. "Just not formally introduced."

"Well, given the shared living space..." James rolled his eyes theatrically and muttered, "I can't believe I'm doing this," before continuing. "Severus Tobias Snape, meet Harry James Potter. Harry, this is your mother's old friend Severus."

Harry peered up at him.

"Now, I'll warn you, he can be a bit grumpy at times."

Severus snorted.

"And I wouldn't ever call anyone as fast with a wand as he can be 'safe'."

" _James_!"

"But considering he's in as bad a shape as he is because he was trying to protect you and your mother, I _think_ we can probably trust him."

One smirk later, he knew Severus approved of the wording.

Harry reached out towards him with one tiny hand, and Severus delicately reached up and shook it, seemingly completely uncertain of how else to react.

James raised an eyebrow.

"You think Malfoy and the rest of his pureblood friends would let me near their precious babes? Me, a half-blood from a bad Muggle neighborhood? Lucius would call for the Aurors if I did more than _look_ at his blessed little heir - that or gather a posse of his allies among the pureblood Death Eaters to reteach me my place." He paused for a moment. "Damn. I should have told Arthur about the secret compartment under his drawing room."

Harry held out his other arm.

"... What does he want?" Severus asked, and between his voice and his face James was certain that he already knew the answer, couldn't believe that could be right, and thought the request would be blocked by James.

 _Not bloody likely, not when he's_ got _to recognize you as a legitimate adult authority. The sooner that process begins, the better._

He sat Harry down beside Lily, and after a quick glance up at both of them in turn for reassurance he crawled over to Severus.

Lily choked back a laugh.

James didn't both choking it back.

"Berry punny."

"I guess we should have warned you he likes noses!" James chortled.

"That and Albus' glasses," Lily added.

A few moments later, Harry had lost his interest in Severus' nose - for the time being, at least - and was curled up against the increasingly confused wizard.

"Lily," he hissed, pleading.

"He only wants to be held, Severus," Lily told him. "He's never met anyone who wouldn't hug him."

Severus loosely wrapped his right arm around the child, who quickly sighed contentedly.

"Lily," Severus asked a few minutes later, still looking as though he had no clue what he was doing, "just how far do you want to take the very-nearly not-incredibly-unlike-siblings thing?"

"Why?"

"Because your son is going to need to know what he should call me."

"Severus, face it," James laughed, "We've already established ourselves as being functionally brothers-in-law."

"More like dysfunctionally."

Lily giggled.

James ignored it. "I don't think you get to back out of being an honorary uncle now."

Even with how weary he was, Severus' eyes widened. "You'd let me..."

"Sirius, an active Auror in the middle of a war, is his godfather. His only close-degree relatives are us and Petunia." James kept his voice firm. "The more close-relative substitutes he has, the better. _Especially_ since we're all stuck here together anyway."

Severus settled down again. "I think I can get used to being an uncle. Even if it is only honorary."

Then something changed in his face.

"What is it?" Lily asked, obviously worried.

"I think the Dark Lord finally passed out."

"Dead?" James asked hopefully.

"Passed _out_ , Potter, not passed _away_."

"Then you'd better get some rest while you can." Lily lay down so the child was between them, her back to James. He put a hand on her shoulder. "We'd all better."

"Lily," Severus protested.

"It's _Sunday_. You already have the theory lessons for the coming week written down in your office?"

"Yes."

"And Albus wasn't going to have me start substituting for you tomorrow, so we are _all_ taking the day off to rest and recover because we currently all have the time to. I have no doubt Albus will show up around lunchtime to make sure we're all fine, and we can figure out getting food then."

Whether from simple exhaustion, the sudden release of the pain he'd been in for at least twelve hours now, or having people around he knew cared and would defend him, it wasn't too many minutes later when Severus Snape fell asleep at last.


	23. Epilogue

She stepped into the passageway and took a deep breath.

"Good morning, Lily."

"Good morning, sir."

"Someone is nervous this morning," he observed.

" _Someone_ is about to face Double Potions with the Gryffindor and Slytherin third-years."

"Ah, your first day teaching. And what knowledge will you be trying to cram into their skulls?"

"I'm giving them their first introduction to the theory behind lunar brewing influences."

"Mmm. I remember when you first studied that." He flashed her a rare warm smile. "You were so happy you were _skipping_."

"Sev's mum had already told me they existed."

"But not the theory, child. And when you started talking to me about them, you could barely slow down to breathe."

"This is different."

"You will do fine," he assured her. "Just remember, no matter what anyone else says..."

"I belong here."

"Exactly."

* * *

Days had passed.

Before, he had been consumed by the need to remove the threat of the Potter child.

Now, he was consumed by the need for vengeance on the child's father.

And he was strong enough at last to maintain his dignity in front of his Death Eaters.

Glamour charms.

He hadn't needed glamour charms since he had left Hogwarts and lost the need to hide the physical side-effects of his first two Horcruxes from that superannuated meddler of a headmaster - then only a professor, and _still_ his greatest headache.

Word had reached him of that damn traitor's flight and destination before he'd left for Godric's Hollow, but he had presumed the other Death Eaters had kept their very special contact's identity from him as they had carefully been ordered to do.

He hadn't the strength for the number of cruciations punishing _that_ would require. Let them fear the future, for now.

There was scrabbling near his feet, and he looked down at the tiny cage.

It could have been any Muggle child's pet rat in any Muggle child's rat cage, except for the thirteen layers of structural charms insuring none of the wires could be bent even a hairwidth, the seven sets of charms binding the door to open at his intentional touch only, and the fact the rodent alternately running laps and trembling with fear inside it was far too ugly for any Muggle mother to allow it inside her home.

Or him, more accurately.

He still had hopes for a sixth Horcrux, the one that would complete the magical number and truly ensure his immortality.

He still wanted it to be Nagini, who was currently curled up at the side of his chair.

She would need a feeding after the ritual. His research showed that becoming a living Horcrux could be just as energy draining as creating one. A fattened-up rat animagus forced back into human form at the last moment would make a fine feast for her.

Only now, he did not merely want to create it with the murder of the Potter babe.

No, things had always gone better the more deaths he had recently caused and the more anticipation had occurred on the part of his victims.

 _The child first, if I can manage it,_ he thought to himself. _Then the mudblood woman, so her end can distress both the wizards._

It would take time to consider how to kill the men, how to properly have his vengeance on both of them.

It would take time to get to them. He would have time to plot, and plan, and dream about that misbegotten spy screaming at his feet again.

Bellatrix Lestrange entered the room and knelt. "My lord, I felt your summons. What do you require of me?"

"I have heard of the strike against the Longbottom Aurors."

"We intended it to be a Halloween trick, nothing more, my lord. The Crouch lad cast your Mark even as he was Stunned."

There were tears in her voice, which intrigued him. She had never seemed particularly close to her spouse, except on the battlefield. "And is it true your husband and his brother are also lost to my service?"

She lifted her head just enough to nod it. "The Weasleys were there. I personally destroyed their home but there was no one there. I did not leave your Mark, I knew it was not my place, but now I hear it appeared and I know not..."

"It was raised on my orders, that the night contain a victory of a kind." Which was true, if something that grated.

An arson with no deaths, their only victory on what was supposed to be his night of final triumph.

"I am honored that my lord would accept the work of my wand in such a manner."

Her voice was still trembling. Given recent events, his mind went to even more paranoid places than it usually did. "What troubles your voice, Bellatrix?"

"My husband and I were delaying having children until your reign was established, my lord, so that we might better serve you in the field."

"This you have told me before." He honestly hadn't thought she was interested in children, except as a means to ensure the Black bloodline went on in his service after he gained control of Britain at the very least. Given Regulus' unexplained absence in recent weeks, that left Bellatrix and Narcissa the only remaining Blacks loyal to his cause.

"My husband and his brother are slain, and the last of the Lestranges grows within me, my lord. The potion brews in my cauldron, what would my lord have me do?"

The urge to tell her to do what she would have done anyway had the battle gone differently was strong. He needed every active Death Eater he could.

But no, the line would die out. The brothers had been such good fighters for his cause, surely something of them should be permitted to remain. And so had Bellatrix.

He would need good fighters, and his Horcruxes, his wonderful Horcruxes, meant he had to think in terms of multiple generations.

He would need a Bellatrix Lestrange after Bellatrix herself had grown old and died. Perhaps her line and her husband's might breed true.

"Bear the pureblood heir of the Lestrange line," he told her, "and train it up into my service."

"Thank you, my lord."

"Now go, and see to the preservation of your line. Tell Lucius to come in next."

He would be very interested to learn how the slippery Malfoy who had all but gift-wrapped the young potioneer had completely missed the man's treachery. And had likewise completely missed the impulsiveness of young Mr. Crouch.

Very interested indeed.


End file.
